


Sweet Misery

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 13:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7271065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael and Veronica's past is...complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a sad little story called _A Falling Knife_. The portion that deals with Michael and Veronica is the foundation for this story. This is pre-series combined with moments from Season 1. 
> 
> This chapter has dialogue from Brother's Keeper.

He tried not to hope after he received the phone call. After all it was a holiday weekend, and she’d just come home for a visit. She’d said on the phone she was calling him so she wouldn’t call Linc. She’d told him right up front that she was using him as a distraction.

She’d invited him over to watch movies, like they used to when they were younger. All of eight months ago. Before college.

Before they’d had sex for the first time.

If Michael was honest with himself, it was all he ever thought about now. He would focus for periods of time, long enough to get his assignments done for his classes, but as soon as he had a free moment he was dreaming of being inside her and kissing her silky skin and touching her everywhere with his fingers. Three weeks ago, she’d come to his dorm, crying over his brother again, but she hadn’t left until they’d been naked together for the first time. They’d only done it one time, and Michael regretted nothing about it except the brevity. Not even knowing that Lincoln would be horrendously pissed if he found out.

Lust might have been easier for him to handle if it weren’t so wrapped up in his love for her. It might have occurred to him that he was a relatively good-looking kid, and that there were at least girls in his math or science classes who might have sex with him. But he wasn’t thinking about sex.

He was thinking about sex _with Veronica_. Because to him, that was the only kind of sex there was. And as far as he was concerned that was the only kind of sex there should be.

So when she called him, he tried not to hope. But he wanted to have sex with her again, and so it wasn’t a very valiant effort on his part not to hope.

In fact, by the time he knocked on her front door, he was trying with some difficulty to relax his body, because just seeing her made him hard. Okay, just thinking about her made him hard, but seeing her made it worse.

The way she smiled when she opened the door made him think she knew exactly what he was thinking, because she hugged him carefully, not letting their bodies get too close. She drew him inside the house and towards the living room and he looked around quickly to determine that her father wasn’t there. There was only one car in the driveway, but this emptiness in the house confirmed that he was alone with her.

She sat on one end of the couch and he sat on the other. By the time they had gotten through all of _Star Wars_ (“You pick, Michael, whatever you want to watch, I don’t care.”), he was relaxed in body if not in spirit. Now they were to the boring part in _The Empire Strikes Back_ when Princess Leia was trying to fix the electrical circuits on the Millennium Falcon. But when Han Solo followed her into the small space and starting teasing her and then starting kissing her, Veronica got to her feet and announced, “I’m going to pop some popcorn. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She left Michael alone on the sofa watching Yoda teach Luke how to use The Force.

Suddenly, he had the desire to rewind the video and watch the kissing part again. That was definitely not Michael, because he usually fast-forwarded that part and the only reason he hadn’t on this viewing was because he figured Veronica liked that part, being a girl and all.

He looked over his shoulder towards the kitchen, and he could hear the beginnings of popping kernels in the air popper, but Veronica had easily been in there for more than fifteen minutes. He was about to turn 20 years old in a few months and he didn’t know anything about girls. He didn’t know why Vee had invited him over here, but it was weird and awkward and he could only attribute that to the fact that he wanted to have sex and she didn’t. Or maybe it was just weird because they had had sex the one time and now they were just being friends again. 

Or maybe it was weird because Lincoln wasn’t there, and she was trying to be strong this time and not get back together with him.

Maybe it was just Michael.

He got up and followed her into the kitchen.

“Want me to help?” he asked, and she jumped, spinning around to face him, her hand to her heart. “Sorry,” he mumbled when he realized he’d scared her.

She just watched him with her wide green eyes for a moment before shaking her head. She turned back to the air popper and poured more kernels into the top of it. “No, I’ll bring it out when it’s ready.”

Michael felt like she had a tractor beam on him and she was pulling him in, because all of a sudden he was right next to her and he couldn’t remember moving at all. “Vee,” he whispered, unsure what he would say. Unsure what he _should_ say. _I love you. I want you. I need you_. Not that any of that mattered.

She turned her head, glancing up at him. “Go watch the movie, Michael. I’ll bring the popcorn out when it’s ready.”

“I don’t want popcorn,” he announced, and he wondered what in the world possessed him to say it. He was purposely making it more awkward and uncomfortable. He was purposely crowding her, and he purposely unplugged the air popper before it had finished spitting out its contents.

She spun away from him quickly, but then just as quickly turned back, facing him. Then her arms went up and she wrapped her fingers around his neck, pulling his face to hers. Michael opened his mouth over hers, determined that if she let him do this again, it would be the way he’d been imagining it for weeks instead of the tutorial it had been the first time.

They kissed heatedly for a few long moments, breaking apart only when they were both gasping for air. Her body was flush against his, and Michael felt like he might fly every which direction if it weren’t for his skin holding him together. Dropping his head, he pressed their foreheads together and pulled her more tightly to him. He wanted to say something, but he wanted to press his mouth back to hers more, so he moved to do just that. “Michael…” she said just as his lips brushed hers. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?” he asked, surprising them both.

“It’s not right,” she explained.

“If we both want it, why isn’t it right?” he asked, kissing her despite her protests.

Her lips responded to his, but she managed to mumble, “We don’t want it for the same reasons.”

Michael put his bold I’m-pretending-to-be-like-Linc moves out by sliding his hands down and cupping her ass warmly. She gasped as his grip pushed them even more intimately together and Michael nibbled at her bottom lip. He’d had weeks to think of all the things he hadn’t done with her, _to her_ , and if she was giving him another chance, he was going to be as bold as he would normally never be. “Don’t think about that,” he advised. “Just think about how great it was before. How sweet and warm and right you felt under me, how—“ but whatever else he might have said was swallowed by her lips as she kissed him aggressively.

 

 

As Veronica lay in the heated aftermath of Michael Scofield, she genuinely tried not to compare him with his brother. Linc was talented, in many ways. She hadn’t had much reason to complain about their sex life. She’d had plenty of other reasons to complain, which was why they weren’t together now (and never would be again she reminded herself emphatically!), but Lincoln was experienced. He knew his way around a girl. He prided himself on his prowess.

But what Michael lacked in experience, he made up for with his attention to detail. She knew he had a gift, had always been more attuned to the smallest things, but the fact that he had made love to her only one time before, in a cramped twin bed in his dorm room, in mostly darkness, with her guiding his hands and his hips and whispering instructions that he followed perfectly until they had both had pretty amazing orgasms failed to compare with what had just happened.

It appeared that a little thought went a long way because when she came the first time under his wicked tongue, she had gasped the question, “Where did you learn to do _that_?” 

His reply had been, “I just figured it out. The longer you suspend the moment the more powerful the moment would be. Pretty powerful, huh?” he’d asked immodestly, grinning at her from between her legs.

The worst part, or perhaps the best part, was he thought his technique needed perfecting and so he did it again until Veronica’s thighs trembled so violently she was crying. As she balanced on the edge, about to plummet into oblivion again, he moved his mouth away from her. Reaching up, he rubbed both her nipples with just the right light pressure and she arched like someone had pulled an invisible string tied to her navel and screamed his name with a gasping, wrenching cry as she came violently. It caused him to hover over her as she recovered, asking her if she was okay or if he’d somehow hurt her. It reminded her of how young and innocent he was, that at this stage of the game he couldn’t tell the difference between immense pleasure and pain.

When she had been coherent again, and his fears had been assuaged, he’d attempted to do it again. Veronica had been adamant in her refusal. Pushing him on to his back, she’d climbed on top of him and given him the most thorough blowjob she could imagine. Of course, he thought it was the best blowjob ever, but he had nothing to compare it to, and at this rate, she was ensuring he never did compare her with anyone else.

It was a crime. She lay next to him, listening to him breathe deeply in exhausted sleep, and she knew she was a criminal. If Linc ever knew she did this, it wouldn’t even be about her fucking around with someone else. One time would be cause to beat Michael’s ass. More than once was almost like child abuse. Engaging Michael in this activity was wrong, plain and simple. He might be 19 years old— _almost 20_ she heard at the back of her mind—but playing with his emotions, no matter how eyes-wide-open he thought he was going into it made no difference. Linc would beat her, and she would deserve it.

Michael was tender. Too tender. He’d been through too much, and he was so sensitive that it made it even worse. He made love to her like he worshiped her, because he did. Somewhere in that mind of his, in some incomprehensible place that made perfect sense to him, he no doubt believed he could win her over. If he was good enough, or if he made her crazy for him, she would be his girlfriend.

But even if he weren’t Linc’s brother, it would never be. She knew where her heart was. She knew that this was about sex, and convenience, and loneliness. She knew she loved Michael and would always love him, _until-the-end-of-time_ love him, but never be in love with him. She’d been surprised when the sexual attraction had flared between them, because she’d honestly never even looked at him that way. But then Linc had had to break her heart one time too many, and she’d been forced to admit that as much as she loved him it wasn’t right anymore. It used to be so right, but now, it was almost like she enabled his bad habits, his petty crimes, his moments lost to drugs and alcohol. 

If she loved him, she had to stay away from him until he could get a grip on it himself. And that might never happen, so what was her plan in the meantime? Fuck Michael’s brains out? Because apparently, his plan was to scramble hers with an artful tongue and whispered words and completely un-Michael like behavior.

He rolled over, pressing his chest against her shoulder. He murmured sleepily and then jerked awake, as though he didn’t remember where he was. “Whoa,” he breathed. “I better get out of here before your dad gets home,” he said lowly. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Veronica turned her head so their eyes met. “My dad’s gone for the weekend.”

“What?” Michael asked, blinking tiredly. “Why did you come home for a long weekend if he went away for the weekend?” His brow creased and his confusion was as endearing as it was irritating.

“Why do you think I came home? To tell myself I wouldn’t do this again. But look at us.” She gestured vaguely, waving her hand over both of their naked bodies.

“Mmmmm,” Michael moaned, gathering her into his arms. “I like that,” he said softly. She thought he might start the whole thing over again, but he just pulled her close and rested his head against hers. In less time than she could figure out that he had gone to sleep, he was out again, his hand warm over her belly and his breath gently caressing her cheek.

 

 

Michael sat at the bar, trying to ignore his co-worker, Dan. Dan always asked those either/or questions that Michael hated. It was one thing when you were a kid and you played games like that with your brother. It was another altogether to be a grown man and have nothing better to think about.

Of course, right now Michael could be having a late lunch with his brother, but he’d been too irritated by Linc’s call that he hadn’t been able to respond to until much later in the day. He’d told Lincoln he had to get back to work, which was true. But he’d blown work off and come to Finnigan’s to have a drink. Of course, Dan had to be there and thought they could have a drink together.

Michael just wanted to be alone and think about what a waste his brother’s life had become. Well, really, he didn’t want to think about Linc at all, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Hence the drinking at 3:30 in the afternoon. Of course, it was the dead of winter in Chicago, and he’d go to bed early anyway, but drinking this early? _Not a good sign, Scofield._

Dan’s either/or scenario presented itself on the television hanging above their heads. “Okay if you had to choose, Vice President Reynolds or Kathy in HR?”

Michael took a moment to actually think of Kathy, who had to be the same age as the Vice President, and very rarely did he go for older women. So he answered in just the way he knew would annoy Dan: “I’ll take door number three.”

“Come on. If you _had_ to choose,” Dan intoned irritatingly.

Like a ray of sunshine, a new voice entered the conversation. “That chick in HR. Michael never cared much for blondes.” Her big smile reminded him of when he’d gone for an older woman. She was only six months older, but hey, she was still older. And brunette. Yeah, she was right. He’d never cared for blondes.

“Vee.” Her name felt warm and lovely on his tongue.

“How you doing, Mike?”

He looked away because he could never see Veronica without thinking about Lincoln, and thanks to Dan’s poll, he’d managed to stop thinking about his brother for about 45 seconds. “Um…good. I’m good. How are you?” he asked, looking back into her face. Her darling face. He would always be able to conjure up her image with little effort, but looking at her in the flesh caused his heart rate to pick up. He was 19 again. He was 23 again. He was crazy in love with his brother’s girlfriend.

“I’m okay. You know, I’m over at Glazer & Ross. Lawyer number 97. Benefits are good.” Her voice was lilting, upbeat. He thought maybe she’d already had a few cocktails, which seemed odd that she was drinking even earlier in the day than he was. She waited all of five seconds before she asked, “How’s Lincoln?”

Michael wondered if he was the cause of her drinking in the middle of the day, just as he was the cause of Michael wandering into the pub instead of going back to work. “You guys haven’t talked?”

She tilted her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “No, not for a few years. He kind of dropped off the radar.” _Right_ , Michael thought sardonically. Like Lincoln could ever fall off her radar. She might not know exactly what was going on, but he would guess she thought about him more than she liked. He knew he did. “How is he?” she asked. Her eyebrows went up expectantly, like he would tell her something different than all the times before.

“He’s uh…mmm?” _Fill in the blank, Vee_.

“Mmmm?” She responded when he didn’t finish.

“He’s Linc.”

That’s all that really needed to be said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains dialogue from Brother's Keeper.

Veronica awoke to the smell of bacon. It was a very distinct smell, and her stomach grumbled loudly, as though encouraging her to get her ass out of bed. She rolled over to look at the clock. Michael’s side of the bed was empty, but really, who else could be frying bacon? _Michael’s side of the bed?_ They’d spent one night together and she was already cataloging him automatically into her life. 

Because she couldn’t have his brother?

What kind of person was she?

God, she hated herself. She hated Lincoln. She hated that she was here like this, lost and aimless without him when being with him was all the more aimless. A habit was a habit was a habit. And she’d loved Lincoln Burrows for so long that nothing rooted it out of her. Not even a sweet boy who would treat her better than anyone ever treated her.

Finally getting up, she found her robe and followed her nose into the kitchen, where sure enough, he stood at the stove over one pan of frying potatoes and one of bacon while the smell of toast permeated her nostrils upon entrance into the room. “Smells great,” she murmured, moving to the coffee pot, which perked happily.

“I know,” he said giving her a cocky smile. “It’s almost ready. I was wondering if you’d get up before I was finished or if I’d have to come wake you up.” He plucked the last few pieces of bacon from the fry pan and put them on a nearby plate. Then he stooped, sticking the plate into the oven, obviously to keep it warm. “You want fried eggs, or scrambled?” he asked.

“Michael, you shouldn’t do this,” she began, looking around the kitchen in dismay. It was too domestic. It was too sweet. She didn’t deserve him cooking her breakfast. She didn’t deserve any of this.

“I have to eat too, Vee,” he said, his voice taking on a slight edge. “Come on. Just enjoy it. Please.” He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled again. Cajolingly, he added, “It’s just breakfast.”

Right. As if anything Michael could do would be considered _just_. 

She moved closer to him and his eyes remained fixed on her face. “I’m starving,” she finally said, returning the smile she didn’t feel at first, but as the moment stretched out something changed. Why shouldn’t she have this? 

Why the hell not?

“Fried or scrambled?” he asked.

“Scrambled,” she said emphatically.

 

 

“What happened to the twin bed you used to have in here?” Michael asked from beneath her. She was straddling his waist, and she was naked, and his eyes were on her breasts, but as she pulled his arms over his head and wrapped his fingers around the wrought iron of the headboard of the double bed they were in, he asked the question.

“It was my grandmother’s. Last year, my dad put her in a retirement home thingy, and we got a bunch of her furniture,” Veronica explained. “Now, hold on tight, here,” she said, gasping suddenly when he lifted his head and licked one of the nipples dancing before his eyes.

He repositioned his hands, wrapping them firmly around the metal bars under his fingers. He’d never played sex games before, and just the cool of the steel under his palms caused his cock to throb vivaciously. As Veronica slid back down, dropping her lips over his before sliding them down his chin, neck, his chest, his stomach, his… “Oh, Vee,” he breathed as her full body caress sent his temperature skyrocketing. “I love you,” he blurted out.

She smiled, slow and feline, and her eyes connected with his. He liked this version of her, the version that didn’t hesitate, that didn’t seem to think of Linc first before she did or said something. This Veronica knew exactly what she wanted him to do, and right now, he wasn’t supposed to touch her, he was just supposed to enjoy whatever was about to happen.

The fact that he didn’t know exactly what that was nearly made him orgasmic anyway, so he hoped whatever she was going to do was going to happen quickly, before he embarrassed himself.

She sat back on his thighs, her bottom resting against his knees. She planted her hands on his hipbones and looked down at his aptly saluting soldier. He would have looked at himself with her and seen his heart beat bursting from the end of his cock, but he couldn’t look away from her flushed skin and her long dark hair draped all over her shoulders and her small, wonderful breasts that were hard tipped with dark pink, aroused nipples that he wanted to take in his mouth until the end of time. When his eyes dropped to her stomach, to slide further down to the dark hair between her legs, his gaze was obstructed by his own pulsating flesh. It was then that she finally did what she’d been planning, because she lifted herself up on her knees and wrapped her hand around him and guided their bodies together so slowly and perfectly that the torture of watching himself disappear inside her was only as physically stimulating as it was visually because she moved right back up and he saw himself reappear, dew-kissed by Veronica’s body.

His hands gripped the headboard railing so tightly it squeaked in protest. “I want to touch you,” he grated out as she came back down on him.

“No,” she commanded sharply, her fingers contracting against his hipbones. Grinding against him, she didn’t move back up immediately, instead, she leaned forward slightly and licked at his nipple, which caused him to groan her name harshly.

Then, like something out of a fantasy Michael didn’t even know he had, she raised her arms up over her head and dug her hands into her own hair. She moved up and down on him in a frenzied, wanton way that caused her breasts to bounce with fervor and made Michael explode with an overload of information in his brain that rushed from his cock in a violent stream, causing his hips to arch dramatically up until she was forced to drop her arms to grab him again to stay aboard.

Cursing graphically, Michael reached for her at the same moment and pulled her tightly against him as she cried out, signaling her own release. She lay against his chest for a long time after, panting with him as he tried to catalog every feeling and sensation to draw out and think about later when he wasn’t with her anymore.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say those kind of bad words before,” she mumbled sleepily some time later.

He felt his lips lift in a smile of response, but he was too drained to say anything. Instead he just rubbed his hand against her back and let himself drift away. 

Loving Veronica used to seem like the worst thing about him; if Lincoln knew his brother secretly longed for his girlfriend, there would have been hell to pay. But now, as he coasted in that blissful realm of still-twitching nerve endings and as he realized he finally knew what the big fucking deal was about sex, he decided the best thing about him was that he loved Veronica.

And she didn’t know it yet, but she loved him too.

 

 

They stumbled into his apartment because they’d both had too much to drink, though Michael was certain she’d had more than him. Laughing at the remark she’d just made, that caused her to giggle too, he said, “I should call you a cab.”

In the elevator on the way up to his penthouse loft, Michael had pushed Veronica against the wall and finger banged her, just like so many times when he was younger. Okay, not _so_ many times, but enough times that he still remembered exactly how to move his thumb over her clitoris so she shrieked excitedly in his ear as she spasmed around the first and middle fingers he’d pushed inside her after only two long, deep kisses between their mouths. She was still as wet and ready as he remembered her being, and when he said he ought to call her cab, he was still trying to be gentlemanly. He wanted her to blow him to kingdom come and then ride him all night long, but he was older now, and wiser, and just because he gave her a favor didn’t mean she had to reciprocate.

Though he knew Veronica liked to reciprocate and his cock pushed at the fly of his suit pants expectantly.

“You know how you can tell God is a man?” she asked slurringly as she put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. “Shoes!” she announced, lifting her leg and lowering her arm so she could pull one off her foot. When she lost her balance her other hand flew to Michael’s other shoulder and her body slammed right into him, justifying his cock’s happy state.

He grunted with the impact of her landing against him. “Easy,” he cautioned. They stared at one another and Michael knew his cock was right. They would fuck each other’s brains out, same as always. As Veronica stretched up towards him, he felt a delight he hadn’t known for a long time. 

And then the soft ringing of his cell phone shattered everything. Well, not immediately, it didn’t. Michael wasn’t one of those fanatics that gave each person on his phone their own personal ringtone. But he knew who it was. He always knew when his brother was calling. “I’m sorry,” he murmured to Veronica as he pulled the phone out of his pocket.

He paused as he saw Lincoln’s name on the screen. “What?” Veronica asked, craning her neck around his arm to look at the screen too.

“It’s uh…” Michael started

When he didn’t finish, she asked, “You gonna answer it?”

He looked at her and then at the phone, not responding for a moment. As if his cock knew it was over, he felt himself receding dramatically. “He’ll call back.” Maybe he could just get the feeling back as long as he didn’t answer the phone. “He always does,” he added lamely.

Then they just stared at each other for several long beats. Memories flashed between them, still painful after almost a decade.

“We can’t do this,” he said, something that had been said many times before, only to be followed with lustful gropes and mindless kissing that always led to hours in bed together.

Veronica’s eyes dodged up to his and then away. “I know,” she said, nodding her head. “I know,” she reiterated, a painful smile lodging on her face.

Michael reached a hand up, giving himself one last soft touch against her hairline. “I’ll call you a cab,” he said softly. He had finally grown up.

He might still want Veronica, but history couldn’t repeat itself with them anymore. That was the difference between him and Lincoln.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dialogue borrowed from "Brother's Keeper."

Sunday morning, Veronica woke first, and left Michael sleeping in her bed. She contemplated making breakfast for him this time, and shook her head to herself wondering how Friday night had turned into Sunday morning, and how she knew it would turn into Monday afternoon before saying goodbye to drive back down to Champaign.

Michael wasn’t her boyfriend. She wasn’t ready to call him that. But she had a strong inkling that this was only the beginning of whatever they were doing, because she was the only one who would call a stop to it, and she didn’t want to.

She didn’t want Lincoln to know about it, and that was a clue.

When she first slept with Michael three weeks previously, she’d told a couple of her girlfriends that still lived in Chicago. Not who with, but that she had in fact had carnal knowledge of someone besides Lincoln. Within the week he’d called her on some pretense and made her tell him that she had in fact “moved on.” She knew she’d placed the information with the right girls, and it buzzed through the circles of their mutual acquaintances almost faster than she expected it to.

She’d also expected a little more anger over it from Lincoln, but his voice had been muted, resigned. He hadn’t yelled and when the call was over, she’d somehow felt worse about it. She’d wanted to hurt him, but secretly she’d really wanted to hurt him into action. She’d wanted him to come down and demand penance of some sort; maybe he would deny her his forgiveness, but then his anger would make him throw her down on the bed and show her no one could love her like him.

She knew she’d watched too many soap operas.

Really, what she had wanted was the reality of losing her to sink into his thick head and cause him to make changes he already knew he needed to make. But the truth was, and the reason she had finally ended it with Lincoln, he wasn’t ready to change. He loved her, and she knew that. But the lure of a high, and the need to maintain certain things in his life overrode that love. It overrode everything in his life from time to time, but she had gotten to the point where she couldn’t keep forgiving him without seeing any change.

Now, though, she didn’t want Lincoln to know. Now, she wanted to see if Michael and she could actually have something. Oh, they’d have to deal with Linc at some point, and she couldn’t imagine it would be pretty, and she knew it would probably hurt Michael more than it would hurt her, but for now, for this moment, she was going to be happy. She was going to allow herself to be cherished and worshipped, and she wasn’t going to think about anything else.

Her decision felt good, right up until the phone rang. “Hello?” she asked.

A heavy breath predicated, “Vee, it’s me.”

Her first response was how did he even know she was there, but before she could ask, he said hurriedly, “Your roommate said you came home for the weekend. And I’m sorry to bug you— _fuck_!—“ he breathed, and she suddenly felt his urgency through the phone line.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“LJ’s sick. I can’t fucking find Michael anywhere, and—you know I would never call you—but…” he broke off again and she heard whispered curse words and a fumbling sound as though he dropped the phone. In the background she heard, “Miss Rix? My name is Dr. Lancaster.”

“Lincoln?” Veronica said.

“I’ve gotta go. The doc’s here.”

“Are you at County?” she asked, because Chicago had several hospitals, but the only one that took patients without insurance was County General.

“Yeah. Vee—“

“I’m on my way,” she said firmly. “And I’ll bring Michael.”

When the phone disconnected it was Lincoln who had hung up, not Veronica. She stood, clutching the receiver in her hand and cursing herself with all of Lincoln’s words.

 

 

As he walked into the waiting area that the nurse had directed him to, Michael rubbed his hands on his jeans nervously. He hadn’t been inside a regular hospital in years, and the last time had been when his mother was dying.

If Linc told him LJ was dying, he thought he would throw up.

He came around the corner slowly, just in time to see Veronica pull back from Lincoln’s embrace. They’d agreed she should go ahead of him. They’d even gone as far as to drive separate cars, tacitly agreeing to whatever story Michael wanted to tell Lincoln about where he’d been.

Lisa stood there, slightly to the left of the hugging Lincoln and Veronica, her blonde hair in a crazy ponytail on top of her head and her blue eyes red-rimmed.

“Mike, oh, thank God,” Lincoln groaned, rushing around Veronica to grab his brother in a tight hug.

Michael’s arms circled Lincoln’s broad back, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, just trying to absorb all the energy radiating from his older brother. There was anxiety, sleeplessness, worry, and the faint smell of marijuana. “What happened?” he asked choppily. Lincoln’s tight arms compressed his ribs and made it hard to get the words out.

“He has pneumonia. I went to pick him up from Lisa’s yesterday, and he was sick, but I thought I could deal with it, you know? It couldn’t be anything worse than when you were a kid, right?” Lincoln said with a half-hearted smile as he let Michael escape the prison of his arms.

“Why aren’t you with him?” Michael asked. He looked at Lisa, who had moved over towards him, apparently expecting him to hug her as well.

“They took him for x-rays, and he was calmer when we weren’t there. So…” Lisa shrugged, but hugged Michael tight, and he felt sorry for her. He wondered where her mother was, because while he and Veronica were obviously there for Lincoln as much as LJ himself, Lisa seemed very alone as he moved away from her.

“Where the hell were you? Steve didn’t know, and so—“

“I lost track of time studying at the library,” Michael said. Pointing at Veronica, he added, “She knew where to find me.”

Lincoln glanced over his shoulder and gave Veronica a soft smile. Michael could tell his brother was relieved by her presence. He, on the other hand, was not. Especially when she moved forward, as though on automatic pilot, and wound her arm around Lincoln’s waist. He pressed his mouth against her hair and hugged her tightly with one arm while his other one pulled Michael close again. Michael couldn’t put his arm around Lincoln without touching Veronica, so he just stood there, feeling awkward. “Is the doctor…worried?” Michael asked. “LJ’s only four. He can’t possibly…” _die_. But the word caught in Michael’s throat, and he knew that anyone could die at any time. Even if they were only 34 and the sweetest, best mother in the world. People could die, even if they were all you had.

“They said they’d know more after the x-rays. It just scared me because he couldn’t breathe—“ Lincoln shook his head and his grip tightened on Michael’s shoulder. “I just got scared,” he said, dropping his head down. When Veronica’s head moved into his shoulder and Michael felt her hand slide up his brother’s back comfortingly, he pushed himself free from Lincoln.

He could worry about LJ or he could be jealous while he watched Veronica revert back right under his eyes. He chose to worry about his nephew. “Lisa, have you called your mom? You want me to do anything for you?”

When LJ’s mother started crying, Michael couldn’t help but think what typical behavior this was for Lincoln. Concerned only about his own fears, he’d done nothing to try to make Lisa feel better, or console her in anyway. He realized he could worry for LJ and be jealous of Lincoln at the same time. Not _jealous_ , he corrected himself. Pissed. Beyond pissed. Lincoln was an asshole. All the fucking time.

Sent on the errand of calling Lisa’s mother for her, he gladly left the waiting area to find a payphone. When he didn’t go right back, it only took about ten minutes for Veronica to come looking for him. He stood looking out the sliding doors towards the soft rain that had started to fall and didn’t notice her until she touched his arm. “You okay?” she asked.

Glancing at her, he wondered what she was thinking, but he knew he’d never ask. He didn’t want to know if she came looking for him because Lincoln sent her to or because she’d wanted to. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Lisa’s mom is on her way. I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

“There’s no reason to feel awkward, Michael. I’m going to take off, I just wanted to tell you goodbye.”

The soft reprimand in her voice caused him to stiffen and slice her with a quick glare. “Why are you leaving? You know he wants you to stay. He was all over you.”

Veronica’s eyes widened in surprise briefly before she shifted her gaze away from him. “I—“ she hesitated. “I can’t stay. It’s not good for us.”

“Us, you and me? Or us, you and him?” he demanded bitingly.

She lifted her head and pinned him with a stare that filled him with shame. “What difference does it make? I’m leaving. And he was a lot more mature about it than you, I’ll tell you what.” She spun on her heel and walked away from him, pausing for a moment as the electronic doors opened to allow her to leave.

“Veronica! Veronica, wait!” he called as he chased after her. When she didn’t stop he ran faster and grabbed at her arm. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry. I just—“

“You’re just not prepared for this, and neither am I. Go be with your brother, Michael. He needs you. And just forget about this whole weekend. It was a mistake.” She pulled his fingers from around her arm and pushed him back towards the hospital. “Go.”

 

 

Late in the afternoon on the day following Michael and Veronica’s drunken near-miss in his loft, she showed up at his work. She’d come to visit him once, years before, when he’d only been working there a few weeks. He was nobody then, not like now, with his own office and the authority that went with it. When he saw her striding towards him, he had a moment; a moment of regret that he hadn’t woken up with her beside him that morning. Perhaps she’d had the same regret, and that’s why she walked so determinedly toward him now.

“Hey,” he said, a smile forming in the words. They were older now. She hadn’t seen Linc in years; she’d said so. Maybe she was finally over him, truly this time. Maybe they could have the grown-up relationship she’d been convinced he was incapable of having all those years before. 

“Hi,” she responded, staring at him silently, intently, until he remembered the co-worker who stood right next to him.

He glanced over and asked, “Would you give us a minute? Thanks.”

When they were alone, Veronica asked fervently, “Have you been watching the news?”

Nonplussed, Michael responded, “Why?”

“It’s Lincoln.”

He didn’t even feel the ripple of shock that naturally went through his body. It was just a physical reaction. Of course, Veronica was there because of Lincoln. She hadn’t come because she regretted anything about the night before. Not him calling a cab, not him standing in the lobby with her until it arrived, not even the lingering hug he’d given her as the yellow car pulled up to the curb.

Just like every moment of his life with Veronica, she was thinking of Lincoln for some reason. And like every time before, she was thinking of him for a good reason, but never a better one than a first-degree murder charge.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dialogue from "Brother's Keeper."

By the time Veronica reached her car, tears ran down her cheeks, mingling with the late spring rain. She stood against her car with her face lifted towards the dripping sky, wondering if she cried for any one thing or all the things that roiled within her. Lincoln’s son, the one person she knew Lincoln and Michael loved perhaps more than each other, was so sick Lisa Rix hadn’t even been able to throw Veronica a nasty look. Lincoln wanted her to stay and hold his hand, when that would lead to nothing but a repeat of every moment of their lives.

Michael, scared of the worst-case scenario, grabbed on to something solid to feel instead of focusing on that fear. He’d played the jealous boyfriend, and deserved to have his face slapped when all she wanted to do was draw his head against her breast and pet him softly. It was easier to let him think he’d made her angry and walk away like it didn’t matter. Like the hours in her bed hadn’t been of any importance.

Easier even than wondering for a split second if that was the flavor of happiness.

Finally she got into her car. It was a strange feeling not to know whom she longed for more, Lincoln or Michael. She had the sneaking suspicion that knowing the answer wouldn’t solve anything.

 

 

After the doctor came and reassured them that LJ would be fine with a sleep over at the hospital and a treatment of antibiotics, Michael accompanied Lisa, Lisa’s mother, and Lincoln to see his nephew. LJ was anxious to see his parents, though his unruliness in their presence before had been what separated them in the first place. He’d also been happy to see his uncle and his grandmother, and Michael had choked on silent tears of relief that no one in his family was leaving him any time soon.

Hours later, a nurse set up a cot so Lisa could stay with LJ, but when Michael made noises about leaving, Lincoln asked him to go with him to the cafeteria first. They ate an early dinner together and talked about absolutely nothing of importance. It was only toward the end of the meal that Michael realized Lincoln was still reacting, and in his reaction he was keeping Michael as close to him as he could.

If he hadn’t been holding on to his anger at Lincoln’s asshole-y-ness, he might have let it soften him. His brother’s eyes were unusually bright and his chit-chat was strangely Michael-centric, but because all Michael wanted to talk about was the last day and a half and Veronica and naked breasts and everything else he’d become intimately acquainted with, there hadn’t been much to talk about. Eventually Lincoln’s worry receded enough that he relaxed and then he started yawning in exhaustion.

Michael ended up offering to take his brother home, with the promise that he would accompany him the next day when LJ would be ready for release. "Where’s your car?" Michael asked as they climbed into his.

"Back at my place. I freaked and called 911. I came with LJ in the ambulance." Lincoln replied, pulling the shoulder harness over and clicking the seatbelt into place.

Again, Michael felt that wall of anger and resentment crack under the admission, but he quickly pulled the image of Veronica wrapping her arm around Lincoln’s waist to the forefront of his mind. "Oh," was all he said.

"You must be way behind in your homework, man. I’m sorry about all that. I really appreciate you coming down and hanging with me, though," Lincoln said, clapping Michael’s shoulder warmly as Michael started the car.

"Why must I be way behind?" Michael asked with a frown.

"Mike, come on. I know I didn’t finish high school, but if you’re at the library all fucking night, you must have a lot of work right now. Is it midterms again? I can never keep that shit straight."

At first Michael honestly had no clue what his brother was talking about, but then the lie about the library swam back to his consciousness and he started nodding rather vigorously. "Oh, right, midterms. Finals, really, but yeah, I’m good. I mean, I was mostly finished when Vee found me."

Lincoln sighed. "Oh, thank God for Vee. I was panicked, I didn’t know what the hell to do, and all of sudden I just knew I should call her, but I was afraid, you know. I haven’t seen her—in way too long—“ his voice dropped to a wistful murmur. “And, well, she’s got a new boyfriend, you know, so I was really thinking she’d just be like, ‘fuck off.’"

"What?" Michael asked, jerking his head to look at Lincoln as well as yarding on the steering wheel in his suddenly sweaty hands. Luckily they were still in the hospital parking lot, so the abrupt turn only turned them towards the concrete barrier he was attempting to drive around.

"Yeah," Lincoln said softly. "She’s going out with someone else."

"Did she tell you that?" Michael demanded roughly, and then to cover his own agitation he added in a softer, nicer voice, "Today? She told you she has a new boyfriend today?"

"Hey, watch where you’re going, Mario," Lincoln said pointing out the windshield. "No, I talked to her a few weeks ago. One of those little twerps she hung out with in high school, Stacy, Tracey, whatever, I saw her at Derek’s a couple weeks back and she told me she heard Vee hooked up with some new guy. So I called her and she told me it was true."

"She called the guy her _boyfriend_?" Michael clarified, yet again.

Lincoln sighed. "I know Veronica, man. If she’s sleeping with someone, he’s her boyfriend." Michael swallowed hard and then started choking on his own spit. He straightened the steering wheel and shoved his foot into the gas pedal so that the car jerked forward. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Lincoln shouted, his hands shooting out to brace his body against the dashboard.

Michael lifted his hands from the steering wheel as if in a free fall. All at once, words pushed at the back of his lips and he almost confessed everything in a whirlwind of guilt and excitement and hope. The only thing that stopped him was Veronica herself. He couldn’t imagine betraying their secret unless she had told him it was okay. 

Trying to get a grip on his emotions, and clearing his throat loudly, he said, "I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Linc. I just...I just—arrgghh!” A rush of aggravated sound permeated the space around his head before he gathered a sentence to say to his brother. “I can’t believe you’re okay with this. You sound like, I don’t know, that you don’t mind that she’s with someone else."

Michael pressed his foot against the brake to make sure his car wouldn’t roll into any concrete walls and looked at Lincoln. Lincoln’s head lifted and he drew his arms back slowly from the dashboard. "Of course, I care," he said, his voice low, and devoid of the usual sarcasm a statement like that should have contained. "But anybody’s better than me. She was bound to leave, eventually. If she’s with someone else, there’s no chance she’ll take me back. It’s the safest bet for us. For her. She’ll have a good life now."

Michael turned his eyes away and looked out the windshield. He’d never considered his brother particularly thoughtful. Lincoln was an impulse person, and pretty much the moment happening _now_ dictated the next moment with him. But of all his faults, one thing Michael knew about his brother was his ability to love totally, completely. He recognized it in how Lincoln felt about him, and in the way he behaved with LJ. The fact that his fear about LJ’s illness had made him frantic to find Michael showed Michael that they were more alike in their fears than they could ever adequately express. 

And of course he loved Veronica the same way; but because he wasn’t blood related to Veronica, letting her go, while being the most difficult thing he’d ever do, was something he _actually_ could do. He could never let Michael or LJ go. Even at his lowest moments, he eventually showed up. Late, but there. A dollar short, but inexplicably needed anyway. "Is that love, Linc? Letting the one you love leave? Don’t you think if you told her you wanted her back she’d give this guy the shove off? She loves you."

Michael felt Lincoln’s eyes on him now, but he kept his gaze on the parking lot dotted with cars. Lincoln blew out a heavy, tired sigh, reminding Michael of why he was taking his exhausted brother home in the first place. "She’ll love someone else better,” he finally said, his words like knives of possibility in Michael’s chest.

 

 

There were two kinds of rain in Chicago: the freezing kind that pierced your skin and bones and made you cold long after you’d escaped it and the warm kind, rain that kissed your skin and fell like a gentle lover’s touch. Michael found himself sitting on Veronica’s back porch, as the day approached midnight, enjoying the second type. It was coming up on June and the summer had come early, which was good, because he couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to knock on her door and ask her if she thought of him as her boyfriend.

Linc said she did.

Well, Linc didn’t know who the guy was, but Michael did. And LJ was going to be fine, so that split second when Michael had considered bartering LJ’s life with God for his time with Veronica went by the wayside rather quickly. Especially when he thought of being inside her again, and feeling the sweetness of her abandonment. Her emotional abandon, that is. He was truly afraid he’d blown it at the hospital and that the abandon now would only be of a physical nature: her telling him to get the hell out.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The front porch of Veronica’s house was a wraparound, and it went all the way to the back, forming a smaller porch with fewer steps in the back. Michael sat on the top step, which allowed him to be just out from under the eaves of the house but the rain had already soaked him long before he was discovered. 

He looked up at her to ask how she knew he was there, but he lost his words when he saw the white nightgown she wore. The starkness of the cloth allowed the darkness to outline the form of her body. It had small, cap sleeves just over the tops of her shoulders, but it clung to her breasts the way his hands had clung to them for nearly two days and it flowed down, to just below her knees. The whole time he’d been with her, in her bed, in her room, the only thing she’d put on was her robe. There had been no pretty nightdresses to tease him, but then she hadn’t needed anything like that. They had kept each other naked most of that time. “You’re soaking wet,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she crouched down next to him. “Is everything okay? LJ?” she asked.

He nodded mutely, feeling as though his tongue had suddenly stopped functioning. The only thing he could think was if she really thought this whole weekend was a mistake, he was grateful for his crazy brain that saw every detail without him even trying, because he would remember how she looked right now and he would make love to her a thousand more times in his mind.

“Really? He’s going to be fine?” she asked.

“Yes,” he finally croaked. He cleared his throat and closed his eyes briefly, trying to bring motor function back to his larynx. “The doctor said he’d probably be able to go home tomorrow. Everything’s fine.”

“Good,” she sighed softly. “I’m glad.” Her hand conformed to the shape of his shoulder and her fingers squeezed him gently. “What are you doing here, Michael?” she asked, and he could feel it in her voice; she was gearing up for a big kiss off speech.

He turned abruptly and wrapped one arm around her waist while he used his other hand to seize her ankle to pull her leg up over his lap. Once he had her securely straddling him, he cupped her face with his hands and said, “Linc said you wouldn’t sleep with someone unless he was your boyfriend.”

Not exactly the most elegant way to find out where he stood, but he was desperate. He desperately wanted her to tell him she loved him, more than Linc. He desperately wanted to believe that all the moments they’d shared over this weekend couldn’t be ruined by one phone call from his brother. He desperately needed her to show him that he was worth more than a few hours of ecstasy in her grandmother’s old bed.

It was dark in the backyard, the only light available from a street lamp half a block down from them. She hadn’t turned on the porch light when she came out, otherwise he’d have been aware of her presence before she said anything. He couldn’t see her eyes, just the lush form of her body in the darkness, though he could feel her easily as the rain soaked her nightgown and it clung more lovingly to her body. Her fingers moved to touch his face as well, and his breath froze in his chest when she responded. “All Linc knows is I wouldn’t sleep with more than one person at a time, Michael. That’s why he thinks whoever I slept with that isn’t him must be my new boyfriend. But that’s the truth. I have only slept with you.”

“Since you stopped sleeping with Linc,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she agreed.

Michael shifted, placing his hands on her bottom to pull her closer. His jeans were wet and constricting, uncomfortable for the girth of his hard-on under his zipper. She whimpered as the friction between their bodies ignited the spark neither of them could contain. He slid his hands under the skirt of her nightgown and smoothed his fingers up the outer sides of her thighs until he met the barrier of her underwear. “I want you to keep sleeping with me,” he whispered, leaning his face closer to hers. She met his lips with her own, and he wanted to scream as hope careened through him with the slide of her tongue against his. “I want you to keep letting me do this to you,” he said, brushing his thumb down the crotch of her panties.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she breathed unsteadily, even as his fingers slipped under the elastic of her panties and found the heart of her flowering open, anticipating his caress. Her head fell back on her shoulders as his thumb burrowed up through the soft folds of her body, dragging moisture upwards to the nub at the top of her sex. “Michael…oh, no, we, oh, yes—no! We—“ but she never could get the word ‘can’t’ out because her body told him what she really wanted.

“Linc already thinks you have a new boyfriend, anyway,” he whispered as her body continued to react to his tenacious fingers.

“Michael,” she gasped, her hands fumblingly grasping at his shoulders for leverage as her hips swiveled into his caress.

With his other hand he found himself yanking at her panties until the crotch gave way and he had more room to move. She moaned as he shoved his first two fingers inside her rather roughly, so much so that she arched and keened his name again. He reveled in the power of making her as physically desperate as he felt emotionally, and when she began moving in the rhythm that signaled how close to climax she was, he stopped moving his hand altogether, and it was only her movements that brought her any pleasure.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, and he felt her fingernails digging through the soft material of his t-shirt into the tops of his shoulders.

“You said we can’t do this,” he reminded her, still whispering, even though she was speaking at normal volume, perhaps even slightly louder than normal, as she writhed against his slowly withdrawing fingers.

Whether she realized his manipulation or she just wanted more from him, he never knew, but she suddenly began tearing at the front of his pants until she had his cock in her palm, and then she was impaling herself and commanding him, “Do it. Do it. I want you to. Please,” but it was that, the final pleading note in her voice that sent him to the edge, causing him to hold her hard against him as they strained together. It didn’t take him long to know the sweet oblivion of orgasm, but he kept his head about him long enough to replace his thumb to the spot he’d withdrawn from minutes before. She bucked against him, her thighs clenching on his hips and her teeth drew blood from his bottom lip as he gave her what she wanted.

As he gave her what he wanted her to want.

A few moments later he carried her inside the house, stripping them both of their wet clothes before dumping her on the bed, face down. It took hardly any time at all for him to be hard again and he fucked her from behind, holding her down on the bed, one hand planted against the middle of her back while the other held her hips up slightly, enough to ram himself into her ferociously. It took longer this time to achieve orgasm, and Michael realized that withholding her release was not just a pleasure tool but a way to have her at his mercy, and he found a joyous sense of superiority in it. It increased his own pleasure to the point that when he finally came after thrusting into her for a long period of time, he wondered if he had found the drug for himself that would turn him into Linc.

Collapsing down on the bed next to her, he lay panting, sweaty from the exertion, and still wet from sitting in the rain for so long too. Veronica only moved far enough to press her lips to his shoulder before going to sleep next to him. She didn’t cover herself with a blanket or anything, she just stayed in the position he had forced her down on the bed in, and slept as though nothing cataclysmic had just happened.

He couldn’t sleep, though he was exhausted. His mind worked over every detail, and he wondered at the shame that filled him even as he contemplated fucking her like that every time, hard and ruthless, without the sweetness and softness he had thought was imperative to any coupling with Veronica. 

His eyes counted the ridges in the ceiling as he cataloged the ways that sex could get you what you wanted. Maybe he did it better than Linc. Maybe he was a natural at this, at making her want him so much that it didn’t matter what she said, only what she did in response to him. He definitely felt that with the correct positioning of his fingers he could make her do whatever he wanted.

And he wanted her to love him more than Linc, so he would keep doing it until she did.

 

 

She followed him like a relentless Jiminy Cricket. “The papers have already crucified him. The police say they got a phone call right after the murder from someone claiming they saw Lincoln running from the parking garage.”

He wanted to turn around and tell her she couldn’t bother him at work, but instead he found himself defending why he hadn’t hired a great lawyer for his brother. “He was into someone for 90 grand. What do you need that kind of money for? Drugs? Bribes? Forget about what you want to be true. Let’s look at this objectively."

“Maybe you should, too,” Veronica said with soft accusation in her voice.

There were so many things he could fling at her. Why did she care so much? Lincoln wasn’t _her_ brother. Lincoln wasn’t her boyfriend, either. She was dating some guy named Sebastian, a guy Michael would bet she was already seeing when she let him pin her to the wall in his apartment building elevator, not that relationship taboos had ever stopped them, but whatever. Now a few months down the line, a few months into the end of life as Lincoln had known it, and she had suddenly self-appointed herself to remind him of his duties to his brother. “I am.” He forced the words out. Between the two of them, he was the only one who could objectively look at Lincoln. He knew that.

“All right, you know what?” Veronica asked, irritation escalating in her tone as she followed him down the hall to his office. “I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but I’m getting tired of you talking about him like he’s some guy from the neighborhood that you used to know. He’s your _brother_.”

“I know,” Michael said derisively. It seemed for sometime now he’d been hoping to forget that somehow, but he knew he never would. “And I know he helped you out with your dad back in the day, but you should see the kind of person he is now, the kind of people he keeps friends with.”

From nowhere the question pelted him. “You want to know what the 90 grand was for?” but he turned to confront her, ready to do battle.

“I think I do.” He’d imagined all the bad things Lincoln could have done with that money, never thinking of anyone but himself, never considering what it would do his family when it caught up with him.

“You.” And the phrasing of the word made it sound just like _shit_.

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her face.

“The money you got when you were 18 years old from your mother’s life insurance?” She paused for a small moment, looking hard into his eyes. “The money that paid for your degree, that got you this job, that bought you your loft? Your mother never had life insurance. That money came from Lincoln.”

And somewhere inside him, a truth that Michael had always known but had chosen to ignore raised its head. His uttered “How?” challenged her to explain what he already knew, deep in his heart.

“He borrowed it. He knew it would be tough to pay it back, but that didn’t matter, because he thought you deserved it.” He heard the words _you little prick_ , though she didn’t say them aloud. “He also knew you’d never accept it if you knew it came from him.” She paused again before delivering the verdict. “Michael, you are where you are because of your brother.”

Pain engulfed his chest as he asked, “You’re telling me he is where he is because of me?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know how long truck-driver school takes, so I may make it sound way easier than it is, or way harder. I don't know. Artistic license! Dialogue at the end of the chapter in part from the Pilot episode.

Veronica awoke, warm and cozy in her bed with Michael. They were spooning with one of his arms surrounding her waist, anchoring her to him quite easily.

When the first beam of consciousness touched her, she didn’t think for even one second that she was with Lincoln. Michael had been too overwhelming the night before. She didn’t doubt that the level of restrained violence involved in his lovemaking had been as much about knocking Lincoln out of her head as it had been about knocking him out of Michael’s head.

It had worked to the fullest extent it ever would. She knew with whom she lay right now, and there was no mistaking it, and it made her quite interested to know more, to see what more could be between them. But she also knew, on a level that she also felt Michael understood fundamentally, that Lincoln would always own a part of her heart and soul. Not necessarily the only part, or the best part, but a part that was irretrievable, and unavailable to anyone else. But what she had learned about Michael the night before had ensured that it would not be over any time soon. She knew she was asking for trouble, but somehow trading in Linc’s problems for Michael’s problems was as easy as rolling over and facing him as he too woke up.

“Hey,” he murmured sleepily.

“Hi,” she replied, levering herself up to rest her head on her palm as she propped her elbow onto the pillow she’d slept on.

“I have to go get Linc and go with him to the hospital. I promised,” he said, blinking at her while he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

“I have to go back to Champaign anyway,” she responded, smoothing her free hand over his flat belly.

“Vee…” his voice had dropped to a muted whisper. “Did I…are you, um…” Veronica watched his eyes and he looked away from her nervously. Then he took a deep breath and the words rushed from his mouth, “Did I hurt you? Last night? I sort of, think—feel, like maybe—“

Veronica allowed her hand to move up his stomach and over his chest until her fingertips touched his lips, stilling his flood of words and directing his eyes back to hers. “No. You didn’t hurt me. Sometimes…sometimes it’s like that.”

He lifted a hand up to capture hers against his face while his other arm slid under her body to draw her closer to him “Sometimes it’s like what?” he asked curiously.

Veronica lifted her leg up over his. “Wild. Crazy. Out-of-control.”

Michael was a very quick study, because his hand instantly dropped hers to gather her thigh warmly in his palm and scoop her up and over him fluidly. As her breasts slid over his warm skin she gasped, surprised yet again by how easily she wanted him, and by _how much_ she wanted him. She felt exactly the way she’d just described their sex from the night before. “You like it like that?” he asked, his voice a husky tone that made her instantly wet for him.

Which was good, because he was hard for her. “With you, I like it pretty much any way,” she said, dropping her head down so her lips brushed over his. One long-fingered hand covered her left butt cheek while the other hand ran up her right side and cupped her breast.

He sighed or groaned, or somewhere in between, and his desperation-tinged words filled her as quickly as his ready flesh. “Oh, God, Vee, me too, me too.”

 

 

They stood kissing on the front porch some time later, definitely much later than when Michael had intended to go to Lincoln’s, but he couldn’t really say he’d tried all that hard to get away from her. In fact, he’d already made love to her twice more, but he told himself it was okay that they did it twice in a row when he should really have been with his brother because she was going to back to Champaign, and she had just informed him that she wasn’t coming home for the summer.

She and Jasmine, her roommate, had found an apartment and were officially moving out of the dorms, and Veronica was going to work as a secretary for some law firm in Champaign all summer. When she pulled back from their goodbye kiss, he bravely asked, “So…can I come visit you?”

She cocked her head and a slow smile spread over her face. “Well, I’m moving next weekend. So. You know.”

“I could come help,” he supplied.

“Yeah.” She rocked her middle section against his. “You could _come_ help. And I’d help you. Come. You know?”

Michael laughed because he couldn’t help himself. He was gloriously happy, his body humming with memories of Veronica, and she was already planning the next time that they’d be together. It was like something out of a dream. “You’re way dirtier than I would ever have guessed,” he offered around his laughter.

“It’s you. You bring it out in me.”

He arched an eyebrow in disbelief. “Right. _Me_. I bring it out in you.”

“It’s the truth. We’ve got chemistry out the wazoo. Who’da thunk it, huh?”

“I knew,” he said softly, dropping his gaze to her lips. “I always knew.”

Her mouth pursed into a little pout and then she said, “I’m glad you finally told me.”

“You wouldn’t have cared any time sooner, so there was no point in telling you before.” His gaze rose back to hers, and she didn’t correct him or pretend otherwise, she only nodded her head. “So…I’ll call you, on Friday after my last final, okay?”

She blinked and he thought perhaps tears had suddenly appeared, but then they were gone and she said, “Yeah. Call me when you leave so I’ll know when to expect you down there.”

“Sounds good.” He kissed her mouth again briefly and then hopped down the porch steps to head to his car.

“Michael?” she called as he got to the front gate.

“Yeah?” he asked as he swung back around.

“Tell Linc I’m glad LJ’s okay.” She paused. “Please?”

Michael nodded. “You bet.”

 

 

By the time Michael arrived in Champaign four days later, Veronica had tried explaining the whole scenario to her roommate, who had met Lincoln on a few occasions, but Jasmine had been disgusted. She found the whole thing “pretty crappy” and despite Veronica’s repeated statements about how she cared for Michael and wanted to see where the relationship could go, her pleas fell on deaf ears. In fact, when Michael arrived at the dormitory, slapped his hands together as he said, “Tell me what to do,” while grinning happily at her, Jasmine huffed out of the room with her last box of stuff.

“I’ll see you at the apartment,” she said, giving Michael the evil eye, even though it was really Veronica she found fault with.

Her words to Veronica had been, “He’s just a helpless victim in all this.”

Veronica had chosen to ignore the pricking of her conscience those words caused. So when the door slammed shut behind her disgruntled roommate, she’d opened her mouth to try to explain it a little, but Michael and swooped across the room and wrapped his arms tightly around her. Within five minutes, they were partially undressed and on her bed, and within ten minutes of that, they climaxed only seconds apart. The only thing that could be said for Michael’s speed was that somehow Veronica matched him stroke for stroke, and her fingers dug deeply into the upper curves of his buttocks as he pressed her into the mattress that she had already stripped of bedclothes earlier that morning.

“Great,” she panted in his ear. “Now there’s going to be a wet spot on the mattress.”

He scooted them carefully off of it, and only pulled out of her once they were clear of it. “Sorry,” he muttered against her cheek. “I got a little carried away, I guess.”

Veronica could only nod, since she’d been as equally carried away, if not more so, because when he’d called almost four hours earlier to say he was on his way, she had instantly felt her body tighten in anticipation. It was bizarre, because she’d never been this easily excitable before. She marveled that it could be so hot between them and ignored the tiny voice inside her that asked if she thought she had sex with Michael enough she might actually love him as much as he loved her. Aloud, she said, “We do seem to be trying to fuck each other’s brains out, don’t we?”

Michael’s eyes came back to her face, lifting from the front of his jeans that he was re-zipping and re-buttoning. “Is that possible?” he asked in mock seriousness.

“Would it stop you if it were?”

“Um, no,” he answered, grinning like the kid he still was.

Veronica turned away from him, checking to make sure the mattress had no telltale signs of their activities. Then she moved towards her suitcase that lay open, and picked up a bath towel. Cleaning herself up, she said, “Let’s get my stuff in our cars. We still have to go the Salvation Army to get the furniture we bought, and Jasmine’s boyfriend is supposed to meet us with his truck soon.”

Michael followed obediently, taking what she pointed out to him.

 

 

Two months later, Veronica came home from work, exhausted and in a very bad mood. She wasn’t feeling well, a lingering sickness that never left her all day, the cause of which she was very well aware, yet she had been avoiding thinking about what it meant. She sank gratefully on to her bed and lay there unmoving for a long time, contemplating that which she had been avoiding.

She loved her job at the law office, and she was more certain than ever that that was what she wanted to do for a living. Of course, she was much more interested in learning the law and running her own cases as opposed to typing up depositions and filing things, but she had two more years at U of I and then she needed to figure out where she would go for law school.

Of course, if she had to drop out of school to take care of a baby that would put the kibosh to that.

Michael had come down to visit her the previous weekend, as he tried to make the trip most weekends, but sometimes his janitorial job at Loyola made it so he couldn’t get there for a visit. Veronica and he had agreed she shouldn’t be making trips up to see him in Chicago until they were ready to go public (and by going public, they meant tell Lincoln) about their relationship. But neither of them were ready for that, and so the status quo was more than sufficient.

She hadn’t told him about the baby yet because she didn’t know what she was going to do. She was pretty sure she knew what he would want to do. He would probably handle it much better than she was; besides he’d already watched Lincoln do this, have an unplanned pregnancy turn into a child that he loved so much. He would want her to have the baby, no questions.

She wasn’t so sure. She didn’t think she could have an abortion either, but at the moment, she could only berate herself for the one day in her cycle she had forgotten to take her pill. She’d never forgotten in the four plus years she’d been on the pill, but of course the one time she did was when she was sleeping with Lincoln’s little brother. And karma, or whatever, had slapped it to her.

Not that she would be happier to be pregnant with Lincoln’s child, but it would be less complicated. 

When she had first discovered the pregnancy, she’d cried and ranted and raved, and if Jasmine weren’t such a good friend, her support would have gone by the wayside with a carefully placed, ‘I told you so.’ But she hadn’t said that, and she’d told Veronica she would go with her to the clinic if she decided to terminate the pregnancy.

Having a friend go with her somehow didn’t make that the right answer though. Veronica was like most Catholics she knew, she only went to church on Easter and Christmas, and only then when her father badgered her into it, but still. She knew it was a sin to have an abortion, and she figured what with sleeping with Lincoln, and Lincoln’s brother behind his back, she had racked up a lot of sins already, and that was one she didn’t need to add to her repertoire.

And besides, she thought, resting her hand against her still-flat tummy, it was Michael’s. She and Michael had made a baby. Not on purpose, and not smartly, but still. She sort of loved Michael. Or at least she thought she could be in love with him, if she tried hard enough. But then she thought about what Lincoln’s face would look like when she told him that she was pregnant with his brother’s baby, and she could feel tears well up behind her closed eyelids. He would be devastated. And she would be devastated to tell him.

She had almost allowed the sad thoughts to lull her to sleep when the phone rang. Reaching for the receiver that was by her bed, she imagined Michael’s husky voice telling her he was sorry he couldn’t make it down this weekend. She felt guilty that she was glad that was what he would say. “Hello?”

“Hey, Vee, it’s me.”

“Oh.” In surprise, she sat up on her bed, but instantly regretted it as the fast movement made her nauseous again. “What’s the matter?” she asked urgently.

A warm, little chuckle touched her ear. “Not a damn thing. I just…I’m in Champaign, and I thought if you were up for it, I’d take you out. You know, just a free dinner, that sort of thing.”

Releasing a trapped breath on an unsteady sigh, Veronica shook her head to the empty room. “I…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Just friends. You’re my oldest friend, Vee. And I miss you. Come on. It’s an hour of your life.”

“Linc…” Right then she could have blurted out anything to put him off. _I’ve got plans with my boyfriend. I’m pregnant by your brother. I can’t come, I have something to do._ Anything! But nothing formulated on her tongue except, “I moved, you know. I’m not up at the college anymore.”

“I know. Michael said you moved down on the other side of the freeway past the truck stop. I’m at the truck stop. Just tell me where to go from here. I’ll pick you up.”

A smile broke across her face, once again for no one but the empty room. “I’ll meet you there, how about that?” she asked.

“Don’t want me to know where you live, huh? I get it.” His voice was gentle and teasing and something inside her unfurled like a flower under the sun.

“No, it’s just that that truck stop has the world’s best onion rings, and I’m craving them. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t move!”

 

 

Laughter really was the best medicine for what ailed her, because an hour later, they were still sitting at the truck stop, in one of the big booths, laughing about some little kid thing LJ had done and finishing off what was left of their milkshakes. They had demolished their meals (Lincoln had a double cheeseburger with fries, and Veronica had a regular burger with onion rings), but they still lingered, talking about everything from how truck stop food was the best food ever, despite the grease, to their respective new jobs. 

Veronica found out the reason Lincoln was in Champaign was because he’d taken a short truck driving course and now he drove truck on a route from Chicago to Springfield, via Champaign. “So truck driving, huh?” she asked as she sucked up the last of her mint chip milkshake.

He smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, why not? I’m smart enough to drive a truck, aren’t I?”

“You’re smart enough to do anything you want, Linc,” she said softly.

His eyes delved into hers from across the table. “So you say,” he replied, but then waved his hand at her when she started to argue. “It’s a good job. But I can only drive so far before I have to pull over, so I’ll probably make this one of my regular stops anyway, you know because the food is awesome!” He mocked her with his enthusiasm, because she had acted rather silly upon arrival at the truck stop. The worst part about her morning sickness was when it wore off, she was always ravenously hungry, and so she’d been a little over the top in her exuberance to order and then to eat her dinner. As it was, he grinned at her with such affection, she couldn’t help but feel his joy at her happiness over the food. “Sure glad I could make your week by feeding you a Heart Attack Special.”

She grinned in response. “Thanks for dinner, really. You did make my day, if not my week. I just haven’t been feeling that great, so this was a real pick-me-up.”

“Things going okay with Mr. Perfect?” he asked, dropping her gaze to pick up his own milkshake.

“Mr. Who?” she asked quizzically.

“Your new guy? Things okay with him? Or did he do something that deserves an ass-whipping?”

Her confusion cleared right up and she felt her face fill with color. “No, things are fine with him. Just…you know, work stress, stuff like that.”

“But you just said you love your job.”

“Well, I do, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be stressful sometimes.” She picked up her last onion ring and took a bite. She hadn’t meant to imply anything about her love life, so she hoped she could redirect the conversation so that he didn’t ask more questions about it. “Anyway…”

“Anyway,” he interrupted. “I’ve got to get on the road. I’m supposed to get down there by 10 tonight, and unload and then reload in the morning for the return trip.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a little disappointed that their time was already up. “Okay.”

“I’m just gonna settle up with the waitress, okay?” he asked, sliding out of the booth.

“Yeah, you do that. I’m gonna run to the bathroom, but don’t leave until I come back, okay?”

He paused, looking at her intently as got to his feet. “Of course, I won’t leave, not until we say goodbye.”

“Good,” she said, getting up and heading towards the back of the truck stop where the Restroom signs hung.

A few minutes later, they walked out to his truck, which wasn’t a semi or anything, just a one-axle, flatbed with several boxes strapped to it. “Nothing fancy,” he said as she looked in the cab.

“I’ve never known a bona fide truck driver before,” she said, looking at him with an inspecting eye. “You need to get a baseball cap, you know? And a radio that plays _Convoy_.”

“Very funny,” he said, swatting at her backside as she turned around to look at the flatbed and its contents.

“Hey!” she yelled, jumping and grabbing at her bottom. “Hands off!”

She said it jokingly, but when she looked back at him, she could tell it hadn’t gone over like that. He looked almost embarrassed, which was saying a lot for Lincoln Burrows. “Sorry, Vee,” he said contritely.

“Hey—I was only kidding,” she replied, turning around to face him completely. She took a stop closer and reached up to grab the lapels of the button-up shirt he was wearing, one he hadn’t bothered to button the top four buttons of.

He shook his head and looked down at his shirt in her hands. “But I shouldn’t. You know. Touch you…you belong to someone else now, and I should not…I shouldn’t, you know…”

His eyes came up and Veronica found herself leaning imperceptibly closer. Was Lincoln being gallant? Was Lincoln actually considering what was appropriate and what should be in this precarious friendship of theirs? It struck her as the sweetest thing she’d probably ever seen him do, and suddenly being as close as she was to him, it wasn’t close enough.

But he was right; she was with someone else now, even if the other person was happy to leave their relationship undefined because she couldn’t bring herself to call him her boyfriend. Did she really think she could have Michael’s baby when the first time Lincoln had called her in ages— _and not for any reason other than wanting to see her_ —she had jumped at the chance? Not only had she jumped at the chance, she’d had more fun in one hour with Lincoln fully clothed than a whole weekend naked with Michael. _Oh, God_.

“I gotta go,” he said, unclenching her fingers from his shirt. He pushed her back gently so he could open the truck door. “Have a good night, Vee,” he said.

As he climbed into the truck, Veronica found herself asking, “You’re coming back through here tomorrow?” 

He looked at her, but only nodded.

Before she could stop herself, she offered the invitation. “If you have time, give me a call. I’ll even, you know, tell you how to find my apartment.”

 

 

As she let herself back into the apartment, she guessed Jasmine wasn’t home yet because the phone was ringing as she unlocked the door. Running, she got to it just before the machine kicked on. “Hello?” she gasped.

“Veronica?”

“Oh, hey, Michael.”

“Where have you been?” he demanded. 

Glancing down, she noticed the little red light on the answering machine was blinking rapidly which indicated several messages waiting to be heard. “What?” she asked.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked again, his tone laced with anger.

“I was out. I went out for dinner. What is wrong with you?” she retorted.

“You went out for dinner? Who with?”

Sinking down on to the sofa next to the phone, she wondered if he somehow knew about Lincoln’s trip, and then she instantly decided he did, because Lincoln had said Michael told him that she moved. “You know who with,” she said cattily, waiting to see if this was some kind of test.

“So he did call you, huh? He said he was going to. And you went with him. Great. Fucking great.” He muttered the expletive, but Veronica heard him distinctly anyway.

“It was just dinner, Michael,” she said, though she wondered if he could tell she was lying through the phone.

“I know, I know. He gave me the same spiel, ‘we’re old friends, Mike, she can have a boyfriend and still see her old friends’.” He pitched his voice an octave higher when he imitated what Lincoln had said, which Veronica found funny because Lincoln’s voice was lower than his.

She didn’t respond right away, because she couldn’t decide if her guilt would win out over her irritation that Michael thought he had the right to demand to know what she’d been up to. “It’s not like you and I are exclusive,” she said, and as though Michael shot electricity through the phone, she felt him crossover from agitation to full blown anger.

“The hell we’re not!” he shouted. “Look, you might not want to call it what it is, but that’s what it is. And if you want to get back together with Linc, you better just tell me right now.”

“Michael—“

“I mean it,” he snapped, going on before she could respond. “If you don’t tell me what the hell’s going on, I’ll _tell_ him. And he’ll never want to have anything to do with you ever again!”

With that threat, he slammed the phone down in her ear.

 

 

Michael lay fuming on his bed hours later. Well, not his bed, per se, but the couch in Lincoln’s apartment where he was spending his summer vacation. He could have gotten his own apartment, but Lincoln had talked him into saving his money and not looking for off-campus housing until closer to the fall term starting.

Michael didn’t know why he’d agreed to it, because trying to have a relationship with Veronica and living with Lincoln was messing with his head. The only thing that had kept him from going stark raving mad about the whole thing was that Linc was doing his truck-driver school thing, and so he was gone a lot for that, and studying whenever he happened to be home. He didn’t really keep track of Michael, and Michael often came up with camping trips with friends or whatever other creative lie he could conjure to explain his absence, and because Lincoln was so busy and preoccupied, it had worked. Until today, when he’d started to spin another story about where he was going and Lincoln announced he was making his first truck run. Right through Champaign. And he was going to look Veronica up. Oh, and she moved? Where to? How’d you know that?

Lincoln hadn’t really listened to Michael’s lame explanation about how Veronica told him about it at the same time that she’d found him and brought him to the hospital when LJ was sick, he’d only really cared if she still had the same phone number so he could call her when he got there. As he’d gone out the door with a big, “Thanks, Mike, see ya tomorrow night,” Michael had started thinking of every scenario possible to circumvent what was about to happen. He thought about calling Veronica to warn her, but then he decided he wanted to know what she would do in that situation without any warning. When he called her, and she wasn’t home, he decided that was the dumbest thing he’d ever come up with and started thumping the phone against his head, as if that would turn back time.

He called her house every five minutes until she’d finally answered, and her reaction had been exactly what he would expect of her, especially when he acted like such a jealous ass, but he couldn’t help it, and certainly couldn’t change it. His mouth was out of his control, and it ran away without even consulting him in what to say.

He heard the front door open, and he looked at the clock. It was past midnight, but he knew Lincoln had said he wouldn’t be home until the next day, in the evening time. When Veronica came through the door and saw him lying on the couch, he leapt up, completely surprised by her arrival. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, his voice a harsh croak.

As she slammed the door behind her, it occurred to him that she still had a key to Linc’s apartment, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that as she marched across the floor to stand in front of him. “Don’t you ever threaten me again, Michael Scofield. Do you hear me? This relationship of ours,” she pointed at him and then at herself, “is not based on you bossing me around, and forcing me to do things your way. I’ve watched you do that to Lincoln, guilt him into stuff and get your way because of it, and that is _not_ how it’s going to be between us. If we stay together it’s because we both want it, and no other reason. It’s not because I can’t have Lincoln anyway, or because he’d hate my guts if he knew I was fucking you.”

He stared at her, shocked that she seemed to understand him so well, that she called his bluff so quickly, and that she had driven four hours to tell him off. “I would never tell Linc,” he confessed softly.

“I figured as much, but don’t you ever even say something like that to me ever again. You can’t keep me, or anyone for that matter, by coercing me into it. Either I want you or I don’t, you got it?”

He stepped closer to her, wanting to wrap his arms around her and cling to her, but instead he asked with a bravery he didn’t feel, “Do you want me?”

She started crying then, and Michael didn’t know what to do, except to pull her into his arms, which she willingly let him do. She buried her face against his chest and slithered her arms around his middle, shaking her head back and forth. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but you can’t be like that to me, Michael. I might need you…” she hiccupped and her fingernails dug into his back through his t-shirt. “I might need you to be the strongest you’ve ever been, and I can’t handle you doing shit like this.”

He whispered, “I’m sorry,” over and over again into the top of her head, holding her as she cried. When he realized she wasn’t going to stop any time soon, he scooped her up and sat down on the couch, petting her hair and her back and rocking her as she expelled her grief. Some time later, she fell asleep against his chest, and he continued to hold her, though it was uncomfortable and therefore impossible for him to sleep very well himself.

His anxiety at her hysterics only diminished as several hours went by and he realized he’d won something over his brother, because she had come to him. If she wanted Lincoln more, she would have waited until Lincoln would have been there.

Right?

 

 

As Michael was escorted into the holding cell, Veronica asked him, “Don't you understand? You just put the book in that woman's hand and she's going to lob it at you like a grenade. Justice and punishment are the same thing to her.”

His steely gaze met hers through the bars. “I know.”

Veronica’s eyes widened in relief and she demanded, “Then would you please tell me what's going through you head?”

“We've been over this,” Michael said with a hint of exasperation. He’d been trying to get himself thrown in jail, and Veronica knew. Deep inside, she probably even knew he was doing for Lincoln in some bizarre way, but she continued to act like she didn’t. She wanted him to tell her, and he never would. She didn’t need to know in certain terms, and if she was going to play dumb about it, he was going to let her.

“I've known you my entire life. You don't have a violent bone in your body. And I know you didn't need the money,” she stated, and he silently applauded her. She had thought about the simple reasons he might have done it, the obvious ones. He had just snapped, or he somehow needed money to facilitate, what? He wasn’t Lincoln, he never had been, in any of his actions. And with Veronica, that had always been the problem.

“Veronica,” he started. He didn’t know what else he could say.

He saw the first glisten of tears in her eyes when she asked, “Why won't you let me help you?”

 _Because you can’t. You were never the answer, though I tried to make you be_. Aloud he said, “You've been good to me, my whole life, you have. But you gotta let me deal with this. Okay?”

She dropped his gaze and raised a hand to rest against the steel bars separating them. “I haven’t been good to you, Michael,” she all but whispered.

He lifted his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers on the bar. “You loved me as best you could, Vee. You _were_ good to me.” She didn’t speak, didn’t move. “Look at me,” he said softly. When her green eyes connected with his again, the tears were no longer a hint in the depths of her irises. “I have to do this. And you have to let me. You go live your life, and don’t worry about me and Linc anymore. We’re not your problem to fix any longer.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dialogue from "Brother's Keeper."

Veronica awoke suddenly, unsure of where she was. Michael's gravelly morning voice sounded in her ear, "You're okay," but she still couldn't place her surroundings for a moment. When it registered that she was in Lincoln's apartment, she released a pent up breath and slid off Michael's lap.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Early," Michael replied. "Before eight."

"I gotta get outta here," she said, looking around in a near panic.

"He's not coming home until this evening. He'll never know you were here." He paused, drawing her gaze to his face. "Why do you still have a key to his house?"

Veronica thought for a moment before shrugging. "I've always had a key, well, since he moved here. I don't know, he didn't ask for it back, and I didn't think to give it to him." She scooted down the sofa a little bit more from him and he stretched out his legs, groaning as he raised his arms over his head and twisted his hands together. She heard the vertebrae in his back snap. "You want me to give it back?" she asked.

Michael froze mid-stretch then slowly lowered his arms. "Nah. If he didn't ask for it back, it's not my place to demand—“ he started laughing and shook his head. "Sorry I thought I could actually say that." He turned sideways, sliding one knee up on to the couch. "You should do whatever you think is best, Vee."

Shoving her tousled hair back, she only nodded. She didn't laugh with him because he didn't understand the whole situation, and she still couldn't bring herself to tell him. Not yet anyway. He leaned forward, and his hand reached up to cup the back of her head. Pulling her close, he kissed her softly. The question was on his lips, but even if she suspected she could have sex with Michael in Lincoln's apartment, the arrival of her morning sickness eliminated the thought. As he eased back to look in her eyes and convey the question more forcefully, she said, "I don't feel so good," and leapt up to run to the bathroom.

Shutting the door behind her, she leaned over the sink as she turned on the tap. Splashing cold water on her face helped a little, and she knew that the sick feeling in her stomach would never result in actual vomiting, but now she had to drive all the way back to Champaign feeling like crap.

It had been an impetuous decision to drive up the night before to give Michael what for because of his behavior. She had hoped somehow that it would make it easier to tell him what she needed to tell him, but she still felt tongue-tied when it came to the subject of the baby.

She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, and Michael stood in the hallway waiting. "You all right?" he asked, reaching for her hand.

"No," she answered truthfully. "I'm sick to my stomach. I don't know, I just don't feel good. I should probably get home before I start projectile vomiting."

Wrapping his arms around her, Michael hugged her gently. "I hope it's not catching. I don't need the flu right now. I'm coaching LJ's Pee Wee soccer team, did I tell you?"

Veronica rested her head on his chest, glossing over the irony that what she had wasn't catching, but would in fact affect Michael very much, and said aloud, "No, you didn't. Why are you doing it?"

"They asked Linc, but he can't because of the truck driving thing. He wasn't sure of his schedule, so I said I'd do it." There was a tone in his voice, something akin to pride.

"That's great, Michael. I'm sure you'll have fun." She lifted her head to look into his eyes. "It will be challenging to get a bunch of 4-year-olds to run in the right direction." She smiled at the thought.

"LJ just turned five," he reminded her. "So it's a bunch of 5-year-olds. But, you know I love kids, so I love it. It's been fun so far. Practices are sort of funny though. Because the little girls, especially, they'll be running down the field and then they just stop, and I ask them, 'Why did you stop?' and they're like, 'Look at the flower right here, Coach.' So cute." She just stared at his face as he told the story, and he shifted uncomfortably. "What?" he asked, when she continued staring, but said nothing.

"You. You're just so great, Michael. I mean, when you're not being a manipulative bastard, you're so great."

He gave a startled bark of laughter. "Gee, thanks."

Veronica hugged him, pressing her face into his t-shirt. As she squeezed him, she wondered what it would take to love Michael as much as he deserved to be loved.

 

 

A few days later, her phone rang again. She was watching TV and didn't feel like getting up to answer it, and Jasmine was still at work, so she just muted the television when the machine kicked on.

"You've reached Jasmine and Veronica, you called, so take the time to leave a message!" Jasmine's voice rang out through the apartment, and Veronica laughed because she didn't know her roommate had changed the out-going message. Nothing irritated Jasmine more though then people who just hung up after the machine picked up.

"Hey, Vee, it's Linc. I was in the neighborhood again-"

Scrambling to the other end of the couch, she snatched up the phone. "Hello?"

"Oh, hey! I thought I'd missed you." 

"No, I'm here," she said stupidly.

"Uh-huh. So, I've got some onion rings with your name on 'em, if you want to tell me where you live, that is." It had been five days since she issued the invitation, and she figured he didn't want to take her up on it. She still hadn't decided if that was good or bad.

"You holding them for ransom?" she asked, smiling at his bargain.

"Maybe. What's it worth to ya?" She could hear the grin in his tone, and her heart started beating faster.

"Are you at the pay phone outside the truck stop?" she asked

"Yes, ma'am."

"Turn around. See the apartment building across the street?"

"Uh, yeah, Garden Meadows?"

"That's the one."

"You live right across the street, and you drove down here the other night?"

"A girl's got to be careful, you know."

"You're a tease, Veronica Donovan." His voice deepened with a warm intimacy that really made her heart start pounding. "'Course I always knew that about you, anyway."

"Are you bringing my onion rings, or what?"

"Yeah. But I'm _walking_ , so it might take me a minute or two."

"It's apartment 15-J."

"See ya in a few."

 

 

It was just like it had been several nights before, easy and fun, as they sat on the floor of her living room eating their food and watching a re-run of _Who's the Boss?_ To which Lincoln said, "I've seen this one! He tells her he loves her after they drug him up for his surgery!"

When the episode finished, Veronica turned the TV off, and silently began finishing her food. Lincoln looked at her, she could feel his eyes on her, but a tense silence grew between them that she didn't understand since everything had been so fun right up until then.

"I need to tell you something," he finally said, his voice soft and hesitant.

She dragged her eyes up to his, wondering what he might say, her heart thudding again, like it had when she held the phone to her ear. "What?" she asked, an inner trembling shaking her to the core.

"I've been clean...for over 90 days."

He met her gaze evenly, his expression blank. He didn't seem to be telling her for any specific reason, he wasn't waiting for her to do something or say something. He just wanted her to know.

She immediately started crying. He reached a hand out and patted her shoulder. "Over 90 days," she repeated. "Since we broke up?"

"Yeah, the day you left, that's the day I stopped."

His fingers massaged gently into the top of her shoulder, and she pushed his hand away, turning so her back pressed up against the bottom of the sofa. She cried for a few minutes, and he didn't try to touch her again, but finally she asked, "Why couldn't you stop when I was still there?" She wiped at her face and turned an accusatory glare on him.

"I don't know," he said wistfully. "I just couldn't before. I don't know what it is, maybe because I miss you so much, I don't know..."

"I have a boyfriend!" she said shrilly, scooting even further away from him on the carpet.

"I know, I know, Vee. Trust me, I fucking know it. I'm not asking for anything. I don't want anything from you. I just wanted you to know. I just wanted-" he broke off and looked at her with a pained expression. "I thought it would make you happy."

Veronica snorted in derision. "If you were interested in making me happy, you would have done this a long time ago."

"I know, I owe you a million apologies, and I'm trying, Vee, I'm trying. But I get why you're mad. I'm sorry. Really, I am."

Veronica just looked at him. This was the problem with Lincoln; he was always sincerely sorry. He'd never said he was sorry when he didn't mean it. And this time, he might actually mean it forever, but what was between them now seemed much bigger than a drug problem. "You didn't tell me this in the hopes that we would get back together?" she asked suspiciously, her tears drying away.

He dropped his head, a faintly chagrined look coming over his face. "I wouldn't say no, of course. But I didn't tell you to win you back. I told you because you deserved to know, and you're the reason it happened." He glanced up, and his eyes connected with hers again, driving a sharp, piercing pain deep into her chest. "I still love you, Vee. I always will."

"My God, you're worse than Michael," she said helplessly, climbing to her feet.

"What?" His eyes followed her in obvious confusion.

"You're so manipulative!" she exclaimed, pointing a finger at him. "Do you really think this is going to work? 'I'm not telling you to get you back—unless _you_ want me back.' Like it's all on me. Like it was _my_ choice," she said, pressing a closed fist against her heart.

"It was your choice," he said sharply. "You left me. I deserved it, sure, but _you_ left _me_. If me cleaning up my life and trying to do better makes you regret that choice, I'm not going to lie and say 'Oh, too bad.' Do I want you back? Hell yes! Am I trying to manipulate you into it? No! If that were the case I would have been up here seducing you, not feeding you fucking onion rings!" He picked up what was left of her order and flung them across the room.

"Get out," she said, breathing harshly. He didn't understand that just because he hadn't been trying to get in her pants, he was still seducing her. Every little thing he did weakened her just that much more. Her heart thundered in her ears now, but it wasn't the sweet anticipation it had been earlier. Now it was like a death knell, and she couldn't stand to look at his face one more minute knowing _he_ would never want _her_ back if he knew the truth.

He stood up, planted his hands on his hips in the stance of 'Just try and make me,' but before he could respond, Jasmine came through the front door. She glanced back and forth between them and their apparent standoff, and said with dripping sarcasm, "Well, look what the cat dragged in."

"Nice to see you, too, Jasmine," Lincoln said irritatedly, throwing her a venomous glance. It wasn't that he and Jasmine didn't get along. Veronica knew he was just mad to get interrupted.

"Oh, no," she said, her eyes dancing as she looked back at Veronica, who suddenly felt sick to her stomach again. "The pleasure is all mine. Or is it all yours, Veronica?" she asked pointedly.

As Jasmine stayed standing in the open doorway, Veronica shot her a warning look and then swung her gaze back to Linc. "He was just leaving. The pleasure, whatever little it ever was, is over."

 

 

A few days later, Michael got home late in the evening from his janitor job to find Lincoln sitting on the couch staring at a bottle of Jose Cuervo that sat on the table in front of him. The bottle still had the seal on it, which Michael was grateful to see, but there was a dark feeling in the room with his brother, and Lincoln stared pensively at the brown liquid, as though it might have some answers for him.

“What’s going on?” Michael asked carefully, setting his backpack down on the living room carpet. 

Lincoln’s eyes moved from the bottle to his brother and he said flatly, “She wasn’t happy to hear about my sobriety, so why should I be proud of it.”

It wasn’t intoned as a question, even though it was a question. Michael’s forehead wrinkled briefly before he realized the trip to Champaign two days before must have included a visit to Veronica some where in the middle of it. “You told her?” he asked, moving to sit on the recliner to the left of the sofa.

“Yeah,” Lincoln said tonelessly. “She got mad and acted like I was asking her to get back together. It pissed me off, because honestly, that’s not why I told her. I know she’s happy with whoever her new boyfriend is, but I just thought—“ he broke off and leaned forward as though he were going to grab the tequila bottle. Instead he dropped his head into his hands.

“Don’t do it, Linc. She’s not worth it. She shoulda been happy for you.” That was all he said, but it was enough to rile his brother.

“Don’t say that,” Lincoln said angrily, raising his snapping eyes back to his brother. “You know what I’ve put her through. She _is_ worth it, but I’m not, that’s the problem. That’s always been the problem.”

Michael instantly felt guilty, because he’d only said it to try to steer Lincoln away from caring what Veronica thought. Of course, trying to separate them was like trying to keep two magnets from cleaving together in close proximity. “Lincoln. You are worth it. And you have to do this for yourself, not for Veronica.” That was at least true, and not a manipulative thing to say. Ever since Veronica had called him a manipulative bastard, he’d been more aware of how much manipulating he did every day. It was sort of a sickness with him, a habit he’d acquired at a young age so he could survive, but he didn’t need it anymore, and he still did it anyway.

Though, if he was going to keep Veronica, he was certain manipulation of some sort was the only way to get it done. But he told himself he had to limit it to sexual manipulation, because that was somehow less bad, and besides, Veronica benefited from that, right? Satisfying her sexually would bind her to him, and that’s all he wanted, until she loved him enough to tell Linc about their relationship.

Lincoln blew out a heavy breath. “You’re right, of course. I mean, that’s why I’ve been sitting here for three hours. I know that I should care more about how this would affect LJ, or even you, but all I can think about is her face. I thought when I told her, it would cause her to smile, you know? But she started crying, and she just got this horrified look on her face.” He shook his head, and Michael just stared at him, trying to keep a horrified expression from crossing his own face. “I didn’t think she’d jump back into my arms, but I thought it would be a good thing.”

Michael cleared his throat and stood up, moving to the table to grab the bottle of tequila. “It is a good thing, Linc. Forget about Veronica. This,” he held the bottle in front of his brother’s face, “won’t make her come back either.”

Lincoln looked up at Michael. “Don’t you get it, Michael? I didn’t buy that to make her come back, I bought that to _forget_ that she’s not coming back.” He reached up and wrapped his hand around the base of the bottle. “This is always about forgetting what I don’t have, or what I fucked up, or what I can’t change.”

Michael tightened his grip on the top of the bottle. “It will all still be there when you’re sober again. And tequila makes you puke your guts up anyway. Why did you get this? You shoulda got something better.” Michael made his tone conversational, and pulled the bottle towards his body. Lincoln’s grip tightened briefly before his fingers let go, spreading wide into the air. Michael tucked the alcohol under his arm and asked, “I’ll get rid of it. You home for a couple days, or do you have a run tomorrow?” 

“It’s my turn with LJ tomorrow. I’ll go get him and have him for a couple days before my weekend run.”

“Then you really don’t want to do this now, and be sick the whole time LJ’s here. Besides we’ve got a game tomorrow afternoon. You gotta see that kid run after the soccer ball. He can’t seem to kick it worth a lick, but he can get to it quicker than any of the other kids.”

Michael watched as Lincoln leaned back on the sofa. His brother’s blue eyes locked on the tequila bottle under his arm for a brief moment, and then they came up to Michael’s face. “Get outta here with that,” he said nodding his head toward Michael’s armpit.

“I’m on my way. You’ll be all right?” Michael asked.

Lincoln sighed and rubbed his face with a less than steady hand. “Yeah. I’m just going to go to bed.”

Michael scooped up his backpack and went towards the door he’d just come through. “I’ll see you in the morning, then,” he said.

“Mike?” With his hand on the doorknob, he looked back at Lincoln. “Thanks, man. Really, without you, I’d probably end up in the dipsy dumpster out back.”

Michael forced his lips into a facsimile of a smile. “You’ll be okay, Linc.”

 

 

Michael circled into the back alley to throw the bottle of tequila in the same dumpster Lincoln had just referenced, but instead, he sat down on his backpack and broke the seal on the bottle. The first swallow burned so badly as it went down his throat, he thought he might die from it, but the second hurt less, and the third even less than that. Sitting in the darkness, he drank enough to start floating a little, but not enough to lose complete sense of what was going on.

Veronica cried when Lincoln told her he was clean. And they weren’t tears of joy.

What else could it be? Why wouldn’t she be happy about it? It didn’t make any sense. As long as Michael could remember, Veronica had been trying to get Lincoln to commit to the AA/NA program. Well, maybe not as long as he could remember, but at least for the last four years, as his drug use escalated. Many a night that she cried on Michael’s shoulder it had been about her fears for what would become of Lincoln should he continue down that road. Michael shared her fears, of course, but he also knew that Lincoln was highly functional, just like him, even when it seemed to everyone else like they weren’t. What they could endure wasn’t normal; Michael had learned that as he got older, but he also didn’t think the drugs would be what killed Lincoln.

Crab Simmons would be what killed Lincoln. The lowlife that Lincoln did occasional favors for, and the strange loyalty Lincoln showed towards the guy never failed to puzzle Michael endlessly. Of all the things his brother did that made little sense that was the biggest one.

Michael never mentioned that to Veronica though, because it seemed like it would put her in the line of fire too. She was apt to go down and give Crab a piece of her mind, and then Lincoln would beat the hell out of Michael for saying anything to her, especially if Veronica got hurt in the process. No, Michael would never be the one to tell her about Crab Simmons.

But he had to know why she wasn’t happy that Lincoln had 95 days under his belt. And he had to make sure she got happy about it and told Linc she was happy about it, but somehow still keep Veronica as his girl. He took another drink from the tequila bottle. He had no idea what he would do to accomplish that.

 

 

Michael sat across from Lincoln, the glass that separated them now seeming much thicker than it had just days before. “Who told you? Veronica?” Lincoln asked. He knew that’s who had told Michael about the 90 grand, because no one else knew. His brother paused before asking, “What does she make of all this? About me?”

Michael muttered softly from the depth of his guilt, “I don’t know.” How many lies would he tell Lincoln about Veronica, even now?

Lincoln looked thoughtful as he said, “Glad she got out when she did, huh?”

Michael allowed a small smile to touch his lips. “You know how she feels about you.” Lincoln made a little sound of pleasure that could have been an agreement, Michael wasn’t sure. “It’s been the same way ever since we were kids.”

And that was really the truth. Nothing Michael ever did could have changed it, but like a brick wall, he’d rammed himself up against it so many times, until his heart was black and blue.

“Yeah,” Lincoln agreed quietly. And maybe that was it right there. Deep inside, while Michael had been fighting for some sort of dominance over his brother, his brother had just simply accepted the truth. Veronica loved him, and always would, and he returned the sentiment no matter what had happened, what would happen, what could happen.

If Michael learned anything from watching them all his life, it was that their love contained the unconditional. There would be moments of anger, disappointment, disillusionment, but in the end, the love remained. Lincoln had loved Michael like that his whole life too, and finally Michael understood it. Saw it, felt it in its entirety.

And because of that, he had to return it. “Linc, I owe you an apology.”

He didn’t end up saying what he was really apologizing for, and it wasn’t even until he left Statesville that day, and drove home that he began to know just what his crime entailed. It wasn’t his hand inside Veronica’s panties while Lincoln contemplated the pros and cons of killing someone to pay a debt; it wasn’t even the desire to do more than that to her as the phone rang and he said for the last time, and really meant it, “We can’t do this.”

Over the course of the next several weeks, he realized the apology was for all the times he’d tried to _be_ Lincoln, or be better than Linc, or be what Veronica deserved. All along he had been trying to live Lincoln’s life, and when he had finally broken away from Lincoln to have his own life, one separate from Veronica and their undying need of each other, Michael still hadn’t had a life. In his antiseptic existence in his loft that had never held anyone he truly cared about until he had tacked the lives of strangers to his walls in an effort to know them when he saw them, in an effort to manipulate them. Manipulate them for Lincoln.

Manipulate them so he and his brother could both live.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "Allen."

Michael arrived at Veronica’s apartment unannounced two days later, on a Friday evening. He hadn’t been able to come visit her over the past two weekends, and he hadn’t seen her since her midnight arrival the week before. He hadn’t had sex with her in 18 days. Not that he was counting.

But he was counting. And he would have been hard when she opened the door out of anticipation and sheer frustration, except that he was too worried about why she’d cried when Lincoln told her he hadn’t used in over 90 days. For the first time ever, the most important thing to accomplish upon first seeing Veronica was not how quickly he could get her out of her clothes. But it wasn’t far from the front of his mind.

“Hi!” she said, giving him a warm smile. “I kept waiting for you to call and let me know if you were gonna make it down tonight.” She reached out for him, giving him a tight hug. She pulled him inside the apartment, and he almost let it go. He almost just let this be what he wished it could be.

But he couldn’t. He had to know. He was a masochist who had to know. “Thought I’d surprise you,” he murmured as he walked into the apartment. He looked around for signs of Jasmine, but when he saw none, he jumped right in. “So, what is the problem you’ve got with Linc’s sobriety?”

He turned to look at her, and her eyes were wide for a moment before they shifted away from him. Gesturing towards the sofa, she walked over and sat down. When he didn’t join her, but stayed standing in the middle of the room, she asked, “Why didn’t _you_ tell me?”

“Wasn’t my place.”

“Oh, right, Michael. Like you haven’t told me other things behind Linc’s back before? Stuff he didn’t want you to tell me, even? But this time, it was actually something good, and you didn’t mention it? Don’t you think I can’t figure that out?” She gave him a knowing look and sat back against the sofa cushions. “You never stop thinking, do you?”

“He didn’t tell me until he had 60 days,” Michael explained, looking at his feet for a moment. When he lifted his head, he told the truth on two of his motives. “If he failed, it was better that you not know he’d even tried. If he succeeded, it was better for me that you not know, so you couldn’t go running back to him.” There, that was the manipulation he was being honest about.

She tilted her head and a soft expression crossed her face. “Michael, you can’t go through your life thinking—“

“Yes, I can. And I do, Vee. I love you. I want you to be _with me_. If Lincoln straightens out his life, what’s to stop you from going back to where you belong? You slept with me two days after you broke up with him. Three weeks later, we slept together again and so we’re together, right? No, I’m just the rebound guy. And even though you think I’m young and stupid, and even though I can make you scream when you come, I don’t have years of you wearing your heart out on me to my advantage.”

He saw tears spring to her eyes when she said, “No, you’ve just worn your heart out on me. I wore mine out on Linc and you wore yours out on me. And who did he wear his out on? Nobody. Nothing.” She shook her head and lifted her hands up, stretching her arms out to him. “Come here, Michael.” Slowly, he crossed the space between them and took her hands in his. “We’re in this together,” she said. “Right?”

The way she said that last word made Michael’s skin prickle. Something ate at the pit of his stomach, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she somehow viewed this choice to be with him as something she had to do. It was a fleeting thought because she tugged on his hands until he pulled her up and then she slid her arms around his neck. She was so small compared to him, and she had to stretch up on her tiptoes to secure her grip on him. Her body came up flush against him and his body reacted immediately.

“Right?” she repeated.

Michael brushed his lips over hers, lightly, tentatively. “Right,” he whispered, caressing her mouth with his own, back and forth, back and forth, until her lips parted on a little gasp.

“You’ll stay with me, no matter what?” she asked, her arms tightening around him even more.

Michael lifted her up so her feet dangled above the carpet, his hands cupping her ass. “No matter what,” he parroted. 

Veronica’s legs wrapped around his thighs, and she rubbed herself against his stiffening cock, the material of both their jeans creating a delicious friction that reminded Michael yet again of the 18 days since he’d had any relief. “What are you waiting for?” she asked as their lips hovered mere millimeters apart and she continued to wiggle her hips against his until even his teeth ached with the need.

He carried her, stumbling somewhat as her grip on his legs didn’t allow for much movement, until he got to her bedroom door. Pushing it open with one shoulder, he took the few steps to the bed and dropped them both down by lowering one knee to the mattress. He would have reached for her t-shirt to pull it up and over her head, but her hands went right to his zipper and she yanked it down, shoving his jeans and underwear over his hips quickly so that his erection sprang free between them. With a enthusiasm he’d never been privileged to experience from her before, Veronica slid down slightly, cupped him in her hands and then took him in her mouth, nearly making him come right with the first flick of her tongue. He breathed a few choice swear words and his hands plowed through her hair, gripping her hard as she sucked ravenously. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh God,” he chanted, trying to pull her away before she ruined the whole thing, he was too close, and it had been too long, and he hadn’t even jerked off alone during all that time, because now that wasn’t any good in comparison to making love with Veronica.

Her hands slid around to his buttocks, stroking his skin tantalizingly and then she ran her fingernails down the backs of his thighs, pushing his pants the rest of the way down in the process. It wasn’t until her nails came back up the front of his thighs that he lost it totally; he came, bucking against her face, a stream of semen filling her mouth to overflowing. He couldn’t stay upright and as he started to fall to the bed, she shifted, making room for him so he landed solidly next to her.

His chest heaved and his mind couldn’t even focus on what had just happened, because her fist had wrapped around his softened member, and he could hear himself saying, “Stop, oh, God, Veronica, stop—“ because he was always like this after he came, the tip of his penis ridiculously sensitive to any contact, a fact Veronica knew from their frequent lovemaking over the last three months. She didn’t stop though; instead she used her fist to stroke him up and down from base to head. Concentrating at the head, she used the left over semen as lubricant, causing him to whimper and moan in delighted torment until he began to harden again under her fingers.

Then, she scrambled from the bed and tore her own clothes off, a show that went much too quickly for Michael’s taste, but inspired him until he was ready to go again, his cock standing up in invitation. Mounting him eagerly, she slid down on him in much the same fashion that her mouth had attacked him, but then she just sat, clenching around him so that he could feel every little quiver of her tight passage. He reached up to fondle her nipples, which were flushed with color and already hard, as though his lips and stubble-lined chin had already been there. “You trying to kill me?” he asked, watching her face closely as his fingers teased her.

“Reassure you,” she gasped just as she lifted herself up slightly and the milking motion on his cock got stronger. Michael pinched both her nipples and she jerked forward with a high-pitched squeal, slamming their loins back together in a rush of bodily fluids. “Yes!” she cried, and then she started moving on him even more ferociously. She unbuttoned his shirt and slid her hands up his chest to press against his shoulders, but Michael suddenly got tired of being submissive. He sat up, gripping her bottom with one hand while he slid the other under her hair to wrap his fingers around her neck.

He’d thought it felt pretty amazing as it was, but sitting up drove Veronica’s legs further apart and his penetration seemed even deeper that way. Her breasts flattened against his chest, the rasping of their skin inciting his nerve endings. Their gazes connected, and the hungry, desperate gleam in her green eyes tipped him off to this being about more than just his own reassurance. He didn’t know what she sought from him, but he felt determined to give it to her in the only way she ever seemed to ask him for anything, through the intensity of their bodies pressed tightly together. The hand on her bottom scooted up under her buttocks until his fingers could feel the place where their bodies met, sliding apart and back together in a sublime rhythm. Using the moisture that had built up between them, he dragged his fingers back up between her butt cheeks until she gasped his name and her head jerked back as though he’d pulled on her neck. Tightening his fingers around her neck so the connection between their eyes couldn’t be broken, he helped her maintain the up and down movement of her body, until he could feel them both getting close.

“I’m very reassured,” he muttered, and then he opened his mouth over hers, drawing his tongue over her lips and down her chin before moving back and forcing her mouth open to plunder the inside. She reacted with a clash of her teeth against his tongue and then she stiffened in his arms, convulsing from head to toe, her shaking release a profound moment that flooded his body with lightening. She cried out as the tremors receded and then he released her neck, dropping his hand to her ass so both could grip her hard as he thrust once more, coming so spectacularly again it reminded him why he’d wait 18 days or 18 years, whatever it took to be with Veronica forever. 

 

 

Veronica awoke because Jasmine was whispering right by her ear, “Wake up, Vee.”

It startled her and she jerked as she awakened. Then she felt Michael stir next to her and her eyes opened to see her roommate kneeling next to the bed, Jasmine’s face very close to her own. Jasmine pressed her finger to her lips to indicate Veronica should be quiet. She gestured at Michael and put her hands together under her cheek to show Michael was still asleep. Then she pointed towards the living room and motioned for Veronica to follow her out. 

After Jasmine slipped out of the door and closed it behind her, Veronica climbed from the bed. It was early on Saturday, but not too early. Michael lay on his stomach, his head turned toward the opposite wall, and his deep breathing showed his slumber had not been thoroughly disturbed. Dragging on her robe, she went into the living room to see what was up with Jasmine.

When she walked out, Lincoln was standing near the front door with her roommate. He looked tense, but Veronica had only one thought: get him the hell out of her apartment before Michael came walking out of her bedroom. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, making a beeline for him.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, his voice muted.

“Get out, get out, get out! I don’t want to see you.” She actually shoved him back, pushing him into the door.

He grunted as his head collided with the door frame. Lifting his hands to wrap them around her upper arms, he pleaded, “Just give me five minutes. I’ll even say what I’ve got to say out in the hall here, if that will make you listen to me.”

Veronica glared at him, but inside she was shaking. The hallway meant at least two doors between him and Michael, so she took the proferred opportunity. “Out,” she said, jerking herself away from him and gesturing to the door.

Lincoln turned around and opened it, glancing over his shoulder as he walked out, she supposed to make sure she followed him. Once they were outside, Veronica turned back to Jasmine, her eyes wide. “Don’t let him come out here,” she said softly, her back to Lincoln.

Jasmine nodded, though the look she gave Veronica told her it was only because she felt sorry for Michael.

Veronica faced Lincoln, tapping her wrist as if she had an actual watch on. “Time’s a wastin’,” she said.

Lincoln took a deep breath, compressed his lips and narrowed his eyes at her. “You know,” he began, but then he shook his head, obviously thinking better of whatever he was going to say.

“Yeah, you don’t get to pick my attitude. You’re lucky I’m even giving you this at all.” Veronica could read him better than anyone, and she knew he thought she was being a bitch. She didn’t care; he could think whatever he wanted of her so long as there wasn’t a confrontation for Michael as soon as he woke up. “What?” she demanded when he still said nothing.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Look, I’m sorry about the other night. I’ve racked my brain and gone over it a thousand times to try to figure out why you got so upset about it, and it comes down to this, Vee. I love you. And I know you love me. And you’re mad because you’re with some new guy that might be the perfect match for you, who knows? But you _love_ me,” he pointed at his chest, “and that’s the bottom line.”

Veronica just blinked at him. He’d come all the way there to tell her what she already knew? She screamed in frustration in her head. “Do you have a point?” she asked sarcastically.

Something dangerous flared in Lincoln’s eyes, and a split second before he moved, Veronica knew she had said the wrong thing. “This is my point,” he growled, placing one hand against the middle of her chest and shoving her back against the apartment door. And then his lips were on hers and he kissed her like it was his last chance, and the first time, like he had 60 seconds to prove something and a lifetime to show her what one kiss meant. His hand slid up from her sternum and cupped her jaw, tipping her head back with his fingers splayed against her neck, the vee of his thumb and forefinger catching against her larynx. Veronica swallowed, fear and knowledge swirling through her as his hand clenched around her throat and his tongue dove past her lips, past her anger, past all the things she had tried to build up to keep him away.

She’d had her mouth all over Michael the night before, but nothing she did could eliminate the taste of Lincoln from her soul. And he didn’t need to kiss her to remind her, but because he did, she started crying instantly.

Shoving him back, which he allowed her to do, when really his ability to overpower her was obvious, she whispered, “No, Lincoln.”

“Yes, Veronica,” he whispered back as his other hand snaked down to surround her waist, tugging her into him. “Don’t cry,” he breathed, snatching tears away with his lips. “You can just tell _him_ that you love _me_. He’ll get over it.”

“No, Linc,” she said, pressing her arms from wrist to elbow against his chest. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. All you have to say is, ‘I love Linc.’ Just say it, Vee. Just say it, because I know it’s true.” His blue eyes were warm and dark as he attempted to pull her still closer, dropping his head to brush his lips over hers again.

“I can’t—“

“You can.”

“I can’t!”

“Vee, c’mon—“

“Lincoln, I’m pregnant,” she blurted out, giving one more giant shove with both her arms until he released her, perhaps out of shock.

“What?” he asked, and for a second, one brief second, something burst in his expression, a modicum of hope that made her realize he could think the exact wrong thing about that confession. And she could let him. One month one way or another would probably be lost on him.

But it wouldn’t be on Michael.

“I’m 11 weeks pregnant,” she clarified chokingly, reaching up to wipe away the tears that now flowed in monsoon-like proportions. He stepped back one more step and then he understood. His comprehension of what she said was just as she’d suspected it would be, like driving a knife into her own heart. Only he didn’t even know the worst part yet. “Can you love someone else’s child?” she asked, lifting a hand to cover her belly. “Can you love me, even though he’s inside my apartment right now? Can you love me when I’ll have to share custody with someone who loves me and loves his child?”

He didn’t speak, didn’t respond to any of the questions, he just looked back and forth between the hand on her stomach and her face, his countenance a war of emotions that resulted in nothing but pain. Putting her hand on the doorknob, she turned to re-enter the apartment. “That’s what I thought,” she said pitifully. Going inside, she turned the dead bolt, before collapsing into Jasmine’s arms.

 

 

Michael awoke because Veronica was climbing back into bed with him. She was naked, which he liked, and he smiled to himself as he lifted the blankets to swaddle her to him. It was then that he noticed she was crying and shaking.

Burrowing against him as though she was terrified, Michael could do nothing but cuddle her to him as he asked again and again, “What is it? Sweetie, what’s wrong?” For the longest time, she didn’t respond, or perhaps because of the racking sobs filtering through her body, she couldn’t.

Finally though, he got his fingers under her chin and he lifted her face up to his. “What’s going on, Veronica?” he asked softly, the pad of thumb wiping away excess moisture.

“Do you love me?” she asked, her voice foggy with tears.

“You know I do, Vee. I love you more than anything.”

“You love me enough to let me wreck your life?” she asked, her hoarse tone breaking his heart.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, tucking the blanket more firmly around her so that their bare bodies were pressed intimately together.

“Michael…oh, Michael,” she whispered in a wail of grief that didn’t go as loudly as he suspected she wanted the sound to go. “I’m going to ruin you. Ruin everything good about you…” she shook her head morosely until he grabbed at her jaw, holding her face still beneath his gaze. “I’m pregnant,” she finally confessed, fresh tears cascading down her cheeks.

It took him only a small window of time to assimilate everything; her odd behavior, the way things had been between them the last few weeks, her reaction to Lincoln. Michael didn’t know much about women, but the one thing he knew from when Lincoln and Lisa first moved in together to prepare for the birth of LJ was that pregnant women were nuts. Anything made them cry, everything and nothing, and you never knew what would spur which reaction. Complete indifference when it was something important, or torrential downpour over the silliest, tiniest thing.

The relief that flooded him was not typical for a boy who would turn 20 in less than two weeks time. Relief that his girlfriend was pregnant, not still pining for her ex-boyfriend (who just happened to be his brother), relief that she was in fact pregnant with his baby meaning she couldn’t leave him, and relief that she lay here now, crying because she thought he might hate her for this news when all it did was confirm how much he loved her. 

He rocked her in his arms and shushed her, rubbing her back warmly with his hands and then slipping one hand around to her belly to reverently touch the thing he had done. He couldn’t help smiling proudly. He had made Veronica pregnant. _He_ had. Not Linc. Nobody else. Him. Michael Scofield. “Don’t worry,” he soothed, kissing her cheeks, her lips, her chin, her throat, anywhere he could slide his lips across her warm, wet-from-tears skin. “I’ve got money, Vee. Remember? All that money from the insurance? It doesn’t all have to go for school. It will be okay. I’ll take care of you. You’ll see. It will be just fine.”

Her eyes searched his and she shook her head. “Lincoln will kill us both if you use that money for anything other than college.”

“I don’t need all of that for school. Besides, I’ve invested it, and it’s making lots of interest for me already.” He tipped her mouth up to his, placing a gentle kiss on her lips. “We’re going to have to tell Lincoln, now, you know. I mean, he might not want to be at the wedding, but he’s got to know.”

Veronica’s head jerked back. “Wedding?” she asked in astonishment.

“Uh, yeah. If we’re having a baby, we might as well make this official, don’t you think? We’ll be a little family, Vee. Me, you and the baby.”

“Oh, God. One thing at a time, Michael. You don’t understand. It’s taken me two months to work up the nerve to tell you this.”

“Two months!” he exclaimed.

“I’m eleven weeks along,” she said. 

He continued to examine her face closely, but then he stripped the sheet back to look at her body. She had calmed down, and he was gratified that she seemed receptive to everything his mind had spit out in the last 30 seconds. The hand he had against her belly drifted upward, and he cupped her breast in his hand. “I thought you seemed different, but I was afraid to ask. I didn’t want you to think I thought you were fat. But I like this.” His thumb rubbed over her tightening nipple. “You’re bigger, and more sensitive. No wonder you were so…”

“So what?” she asked.

He glanced back at her face. “Horny. You were like…starving last night. I thought you were gonna kill me.” Her face filled with color, and a sadness touched her eyes that he’d never seen before. “What?” he asked softly.

“Michael…are you sure? Your money, I mean? And me, and…”

“It’s my baby. And you’re mine, too, Veronica. I _will_ take care of you. You’ll see.”

 

 

For three days following Veronica’s annoucement, Michael walked around happier than he could ever remember feeling. He smiled constantly, to which Lincoln had gruffly asked what the hell was wrong with him, but he just continued smiling and shook his head. They were going to wait to tell Lincoln, more Veronica’s idea than Michael’s of course, but she was going through a lot, and he knew the best thing to do would to be sensitive to what she wanted right now. 

She was emotional, and pregnant, and he had promised to take care of her.

They had time to tell Lincoln. They had time to get everything worked out. The baby wasn’t coming until late February/early March, and they had already agreed that she would go back to college in the fall, but she’d take the spring semester off. But Michael was already plotting how they would work it out so that she could return to school the next fall. He could transfer from Loyola to University of Chicago. He had enough money to pay for day care, or maybe they could just work their schedules so that one of them was always home with the baby. Or maybe they could live with Jasmine, and she could help out too, though he didn’t think Jasmine liked him much, so living with her probably wouldn’t work out. The point was, however, that there were so many possibilities, and he had started making mental lists of all the possible scenarios to bring up to Veronica when it was closer to the time that they had to make those decisions. 

As for now, his main goal was to get them married as soon as possible. He couldn’t transfer this semester, so they would be apart much like they were now, just until Christmas break. Then he would move down to Champaign and either he’d move into her apartment with Jasmine, or they’d get their own place. Of course, getting married ASAP also meant telling Lincoln ASAP. Those were the two things that weighed on Michael the most, but he definitely didn’t want to tell Lincoln while he was crashing on his couch.

And he did worry that telling Lincoln might drive his brother back to drinking and using again, but he had already decided his first priority had to be Veronica. He ignored the sick feeling he had whenever he comtemplated telling his brother. He told himself that Lincoln would just have to get used to it and suck it up, because, well, this is how things are now. 

This is how things would remain.

On the third day of his private celebration as Veronica’s savior, future husband and impregnator, he got home before five o’clock and went straight to the phone to call Veronica. This had been a tricky thing to work out all summer so that Lincoln didn’t see repeated calls to Veronica on the long distance bill. Michael had started intercepting Lincoln’s mail, which had been easy with Linc’s busy schedule, and paying some of the bills himself. When his brother asked why, Michael gave some song and dance about it being his part of the rent, especially since Lincoln wouldn’t let him pay any rent. They’d argued over it, but Michael had won the argument by making Lincoln feel guilty about making Michael feel guilty by not letting him pay for anything. It had worked like a charm, and so Lincoln never questioned whatever Michael chose to pay. And Michael just made sure he always paid the phone bill first.

Veronica’s phone rang in his ear four times and then her machine kicked on. Glancing at the clock he decided she just wasn’t home yet and started to leave her a message, but then thought better of it. He’d just wait to call her again later.

Hanging up, he went to the kitchen and started looking for something to eat. The smile on his face just wouldn’t go away though. He was so happy, except for when he thought about Lincoln. So he just didn’t think about his brother. Instead he imagined the perfect bliss it would be to be married to Veronica and have a family. A real family. A daddy and a mommy for a new little baby. The idea curled through him with more warmth than a straight shot of Lincoln’s tequila.

He was drinking from the milk carton when the phone rang. With the carton still in his hand, he ran over to get it. “Hello?”

“Michael?” a breathless voice asked.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Jasmine.”

He paused, perplexed.

“Veronica’s roommate,” she added snappily.

“I know who you are,” he responded with bite in his own words.

“Well, then answer me,” she threw back at him.

Michael could never figure out what Jasmine’s deal was, but it certainly seemed as if she didn’t like him. She usually didn’t speak to him when he was at the girls’ apartment, so the fact that she was calling now was completely baffling. “What do you want?” he demanded, somewhat rudely.

“Veronica’s in the hospital. Something’s wrong, so you better get down here.”

“What’s the matter?” Michael asked, fear clutching at his heart.

“I don’t know yet, she’s seeing the doctor right now, but I had to bring her to the ER. She had cramps. And she was bleeding. It doesn’t look good.” She paused half a beat. “Can you come down here?”

“Yes, tell her I’m on my way out the door right now,” he said, already tossing the milk carton into the kitchen sink as he searched his pockets for his car keys.

“You should know,” Jasmine added hesitantly. “She didn’t want me to call you, but I think it’s bad enough you ought to be here.”

“Why wouldn’t she want me to know?” he asked heatedly.

“She’s refusing to believe she’s having a miscarriage, stupid. If she doesn’t call you, it’s not that serious. But trust me, it’s serious. Get your ass down here, pronto.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Michael said, barely getting the phone hung up before he ran to the door.

 

 

By the time he arrived in Champaign, he realized he didn’t know where the hospital was, so he drove to Veronica’s apartment complex, intending to find a neighbor who would know. He always parked on the street because there was no guest parking in the complex anyway, but as he ascended the stairs to their second floor apartment to knock on their neighbor’s door, he saw both Jasmine and Veronica’s cars in their designated parking spaces. So he changed direction and knocked on their door.

Jasmine opened it a moment later, looking tired and grief-stricken. Her eyes were red and she held a kleenex to her nose as she gestured him inside with her other hand. “Where is she?” he asked, looking around the empty living room.

“In her room, she’s resting.” Her hand grabbed at his arm as he turned to rush across the living room. “Michael, she’s all right…physically, she’s all right. But she’s very sad. I mean, very, very, very sad. So she may…”

Michael watched as a lone tear rolled down Jasmine’s cheek. She wasn’t a great beauty, but there was something about her fresh, tear-streaked face, her warm brown eyes and her blonde hair that suddenly made Michael notice her, not just as someone he saw on a regular basis, but as a person, and as someone who cared about Veronica. He had the heart to ask, “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, and then laughed self-consciously. “I just broke up with my boyfriend. Veronica lost her baby, and me and Bobby broke up, and it’s just been a real shitty day, you know?” Her hand on his arm rubbed his skin softly. “She’s gonna be a real bitch to you, so just try to be patient, okay?”

Michael felt his throat tighten with all the broken dreams of the last three days of his life, but at the same moment he could appreciate the solace Jasmine was offering him, especially since he wouldn’t be getting any from anywhere else. He knew now without being told that Veronica would not want to tell Lincoln anything, and there was no reason for them to get married, and even less reason for them to live together, and he knew he should be sad about the actual void where the baby should be, but instead he was just mad that all his plans had been decimated. He pulled Jasmine into a hug, rubbing her shoulder lightly. “I’m sorry about you and Bobby,” he offered sincerely.

When she whispered, “I’m sorry about you and Veronica,” he tried not to hear what she meant.

 

 

Veronica got up early the Monday following her miscarriage. It had been five days, and she was almost totally physically recovered. As far as miscarriages went, it had been the good kind, the type the body dispelled entirely on its own, ridding her of all unwanted, damaged goods. 

As if her body knew it had to do something to prevent the life trainwreck that had been going full-steam ahead.

Michael, in all his sweetness, had tried to take care of her, waiting on her hand and foot and suffering every unkind word she’d said without flinching. Even when she told him to leave and not come back, he’d looked as if the pity he felt for her simply muffled the cruelty she was inflicting on him.

And being Michael, he refused to believe she meant it. But today was the day she would make it clear. They were meeting up at the park near the university “to talk.” She wanted him in a public place where he couldn’t do anything like take her in his arms and try to subdue her physically. He knew she couldn’t have sex right away anyway, but that wouldn’t stop him from his other subtle manipulations. No, Veronica knew if she was going to successfully sever this, she had to do it out under the clear blue sky on a typically hot and muggy August day.

When she saw him as she approached the flowerbeds in the park, he lifted a hand to wave at her. His smile was sweet and free, and she swallowed the lump in her throat as she imagined wiping that look from his face once and for all.

“Hi,” he said, reaching out to draw her close for a soft kiss. “How are you?” he asked, brushing her hair back from her temple.

“I’m all right,” she said, nodding. She still cried herself to sleep every night, but she chalked it up to hormones, not to the feeling of loss that accompanied her actual, empty womb. This was the best thing that could have happened, she told herself. And there were fleeting moments when she actually believed it. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he replied, moving to walk beside her as she drew away from his embrace and started to move down the path through the flowerbeds. “Worried about you,” he murmured, reaching for her hand to lace their fingers together.

“I’m all right, really, Michael. _Really_ ,” she emphasized when she glanced up at him and saw the lingering disbelief on his face. “It was for the best,” she said softly, gently disengaging the fingers he’d just locked together.

They were up the path about ten feet now, and she turned, stopping their further progression into the heart of the park. “How can you say that?” he asked, angst and hurt in his expression. “That was our baby, Vee. Our love. How can it be good that it’s gone?”

Veronica scooped up his hand in both of hers and pressed them all against her chest. She looked right into his eyes and said clearly, “It was _your_ love, Michael. Not mine. And we are too young, and we aren’t ready to be anybody’s parents. I’m not even ready to tell anyone but Jasmine I’ve been sleeping with you. Do you think that’s a good sign? It’s not. I knew this from the beginning—no, let me finish,” she said, tightening her grip on his hand when he tried to pull away and his mouth opened to speak. “I knew we shouldn’t do this, for a long, long list of reasons why. And you knew it, too, inside you, you did. But we ignored it because—well, I ignored it because I’m selfish and awful and a horrible person. You ignored it because you’re Michael, and you can’t help yourself. But this is the truth, and I have to listen to my heart, not ignore it. I can’t be with you. It’s not right.”

He shook his head through most of her monologue, but when she finished, he didn’t speak because of the tears she could see in his eyes that had to be choking him as well. He cleared his throat a couple times before finally saying, “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes. Yes, I do. I mean it very much. And I’m very sorry, Michael. And you should hate me, and if you want to tell Lincoln now, so he can hate me too, you do that. Because I just can’t—I can’t have either of you in my life. Not right now, anyway. I need time to recover from all the damage I’ve inflicted on all of us.” She felt answering tears sting her eyes as the salt left his eyelids to track down his face.

“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? I tell Lincoln and then he knows you’re available again. It wouldn’t be ten minutes and he’d be beating on your door,” Michael said angrily, ripping his hand from her grasp. He turned to storm away, but then swung back suddenly. “I can’t believe you,” he said, and a sob bubbled up, causing him to slap a hand over his mouth.

“Michael, I’m so, so, so sorry,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes. “I know I’m hurting you so much, for no good reason, and I’m sorry. But I’m the one who’s losing here. You’re too good for me.”

He dropped his hand away from his face and for a moment she thought he might backhand her, he looked so enraged. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard Lincoln say the same thing about you?” he demanded. “You two finally deserve each other, huh, you’re both equal in your sins. He’s not using anymore, but you’re not the virgin Veronica anymore who never did anything wrong. You’ve somehow met in the middle. I hope you’ll be perfectly miserable together!” Then he turned and walked away from her, but she followed closely at his heels.

“Michael, I’m not breaking up with you to get back together with Linc! I’m trying to do the right thing, here, and you know we can’t be together. You know it’s not a good idea. You know it, you just don’t want to know it!” she shouted the last sentence with all the feeling of her heart.

She jumped back when he suddenly turned around and shouted in return, “All I know is you and Linc don’t want the good things in your life, because you throw them away with both hands! All I know is you think a dead baby is an escape hatch! All I know is that the people I love don’t love me back!”

She reached out to him then, but before she could tell him how wrong he was, he shoved her away, pushing her hard enough that she stumbled backwards and landed on her ass in the flowers. He stood staring down at her, his chest heaving, tears still on his face, and then he just said, “Fuck it all,” and turned again, walking away from her completely.

She watched him until she couldn’t see him anymore, and he never looked back. For some reason, that made her cry harder than when she lost the baby and broke up with Lincoln, combined.

 

 

She spent the rest of the day walking around Champaign. She stopped and got lunch from a hotdog vendor, but the rest of her time, she spent thinking about how maybe someday she could repair the damage she’d just inflicted on a poor boy who did love her like crazy even though she didn’t deserve it. She wanted to tell him it was because she loved him that she was ending things, but Michael had it all confused. He couldn’t understand because too many people had left him, his father before he was even born and his mother when he was so young. She knew it was an impossibility to think any time soon he would understand. Only time would make it better. For both of them.

When she finally went home, she vowed to herself she would ask Jasmine how she was doing over the Bobby-break-up and not even say a word about herself. She had become very self-centered, and she wanted to eliminate it from herself. She might not be able to get Michael to forgive her any time soon, but she could be extra nice to everyone else in her life. And maybe if she did enough good things, she’d stop thinking it had served her right to have her insides writhe in pain as her body voided itself of the one good thing that she might have ever done. 

As she turned the street corner to her apartment complex, she saw Lincoln’s truck. It was parked at the truck stop, but she just knew. Deep in her gut, she knew he was at her apartment waiting for her, and there were only two possible reasons he was there. Michael had actually told him the truth, which she highly doubted, or he had come to convince her he would love her and her baby, no matter who the baby’s father was. Oh, the irony. The irony that she was no longer pregnant would only make him more determined to get her back, and she knew she didn’t have the capabilities of turning him away. Not him and Michael on the same day. She was emotionally exhausted after everything that had happened over the last week, but knowing her strength was depleted didn’t prevent her from walking up the stairs.

Somehow, maybe Michael was right. Maybe she and Linc were somehow even now. Maybe now they could be what they had never been able to be before.

She walked into the apartment, expecting to hear his voice mingled with Jasmine’s, as her car was in the parking lot. It was past dinner time, and they had been known to hang out until Veronica got back from class lots of times. When she saw a pizza box on the coffee table, she even smiled, because it was pepperoni and olive, his favorite. But then she noticed the beer bottles. Twelve of them. “Jasmine?” she called.

There were only four rooms in the house. The living room/kitchen was separated by tile and carpet, but her bedroom was off the left side of the living room. Jasmine’s was off the kitchen and next to the bathroom. A sudden sick feeling afflicted her stomach as her eyes touched Jasmine’s bedroom door, which was halfway open.

Then like something out of a horror movie, she moved towards it, unable to stop herself, even though she knew she didn’t want to see it. But then she was standing in the doorway and she could see the bare expanse of Lincoln’s body as he lay face-down on Jasmine’s bed. He snored softly, something he always did when he fell asleep after he’d had too much to drink. The blankets were under his naked body, not over him, and Jasmine sat on the edge of the bed, a terrified, deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face as her eyes met Veronica’s. She was half-dressed, a vain attempt at covering herself that had begun when she heard the front door open. The way the blankets were skewed, Veronica could tell she had just slid out from underneath Lincoln.

She stared, unable to say anything. Jasmine started babbling incoherently, because she was drunk, though, Veronica guessed, not as drunk as her partner. “It just happened—I don’t know, I guess it was just—he’s drunk, Veronica. And I’m a little drunk..and I’m so sorry—“ 

Finally she put a hand up to stop the incessant noise coming from Jasmine’s mouth. “It doesn’t matter,” she said softly, thinking back to Michael’s face, and the devastation she’d wreaked there. “Just make sure both of you are gone before tomorrow. When I come back, we aren’t living together anymore, Jas.”

She left as quietly as she came in, walking down to the parking lot to climb into her car. Starting it up, she had no idea where she’d go, because without Michael to run to, there was nobody. Instead, she drove aimlessly.

 

 

As she stared at his face, she thought of all the times he’d disappointed her—of all the times she’d told herself _this is the last time_. But this was the last time. He was a murderer, and she knew it. And she’d be damned if she let him take his little brother down with him. “I think it's time you quit this charade, don't you?”

He actually looked surprised as he asked, “What?” But of course he was surprised, because like always she had stood by him through it all, even though she’d suspected he might actually be guilty this time. She’d been at the trial every day, and her heart had broken for him when he was found guilty. He’d even gone as far as to tell her and Michael he knew he was guilty of so much, but this was the one thing he hadn’t done. He hadn’t even been passionate about it, either, he’d just said it like it was the most mundane detail of his life. And she’d wanted to believe him. But Michael _had_ believed him.

“It's starting to ruin people's lives,” she explained, spitting the words at him. He shook his head and his play at confusion only made Veronica madder. “Michael's in here because he thinks you're innocent,” she said, clearing up who’s life exactly was getting ruined.

“What's he told you?” Lincoln demanded, and she knew then that whatever plan Michael had concocted, it was more terrible than any of his other crazy ideas over the years.

“He hasn't told me anything, but I _know_ , Lincoln. I know what he's planning. Call him off. If you love him, call him off.” She knew that was the worst thing she could say to him, the best form of emotional manipulation. “I saw the tape,” she announced, playing her trump card.

Comprehension came over his face, but he shook his head once “What's on that tape's not how it went down.”

Of course, that’s what he’d say, though admittedly Veronica couldn’t see any lies on his face. But she had seen the video tape, and there was no way around it. “I know what I saw.”

His eyes snapped at her, but his voice was gentler than she expected when he responded, “I know what _I_ saw. I was there, remember?” Then he revealed something he’d never said to her before, not during the months of trial, not even in his bleakest moments of self-flagellation for paying for the one crime he hadn’t committed. “I got high that night. I had to. It was the only way I could go through with it.” His eyes closed briefly, as though telling her this was harder than all the other things he’d ever confessed to her. _I got Lisa pregnant, I slept with Jasmine to get back at you, I beat the living shit out of Michael for fucking you_. “I never pulled the trigger. The guy was already dead,” he finished emphatically. 

It was just another version of _I’m sorry_ , something she’d heard from him too many times, and she wasn’t falling for it again. “Yeah I know, you told me a thou—“ she started to dismiss him once and for all.

But he wouldn’t let her finish. “Then listen!” he said angrily. “I was set up! I went there that night to clear a debt. Crab Simmons was on my ass for the ninety grand I owed him. Told me the mark was some scumbag drug dealer and if I took it, I'd be clean. I never pulled the trigger. All I know is that somebody wanted me in the same garage as Terrance Steadman that night.”

The ludicrousness of his conviction nawed at Veronica’s nerves. “Why would somebody want to set _you_ up?”

Lincoln got inelegantly to his feet, since they were shackled to the chain also wrapped around his hands and waist. In frustration, he looked at down at his trapped feet and growled, “It wasn't about me, it was about him.”

Truly perplexed, Veronica asked, “Steadman?”

“Yes!” he burst out.

She’d done her research too, even though she hadn’t been on Lincoln’s case. She had learned everything she could about Terrence Steadman, and it had been so easy. His public records were easy to access. “The guy was like a saint. All the charity work, the environmental progress his company was making. About the only person in this entire country who had motive to kill him, was you.”

He looked up at her then, and the veracity of their argument evaporated with one question. “You came all the way down here just to tell me how guilty I am?”

Though she’d been in court every day of Lincoln’s trial, since he’d been incarcerated, she had not visited him. She and Sebastian were serious now, she had a ring on her finger, which was as good as the promise she intended to make to him. He’d been generous enough in not questioning why she had tried to save Michael, even though Michael hadn’t wanted her to represent him. Her explanation that Michael was Lincoln’s brother and that she owed him something from all their years of friendship had been an easy lie rather than try to explain that she’d screwed Michael over so many times during the years that she couldn’t let him throw his life away on Lincoln.

She had seen no reason to explain it all to Sebastian, even after her close call with Michael several months earlier. It was just what she and Michael did to cope with how they felt about Lincoln. It hadn’t meant anything, and there was no reason to come clean with Sebastian. They hadn’t had _actual_ sex, anyway, after all.

In the jumble of her thoughts, Veronica confessed, “I don't know why I came here.” She knew there would be no stopping Michael, not if he’d made up his mind about something. And even knowing Lincoln was murderer didn’t change how she felt about him either. Maybe she was just upset that Michael hadn’t included her in his plans.

Lincoln found his seat again, and leaned forward earnestly. “You have your life now, I know that.” His eyes reached out, a physical touch across years of emptiness, and she knew nothing could sever her ties to Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield. “But if what we had before meant anything to you, you'd find out the truth,” he said, and the passion that had been lacking three years before was there. Prove his innocence, prove that her love never ended, would never end.

As tears gathered in her eyes, a kaleidoscope of memories flashed through her mind. “Maybe all this is the truth. Maybe they got it right.”

She got up and left him sitting there, but she hadn’t even reached her car in the parking lot before she pulled a pen out of her purse to start making a list of people she needed to talk to. She remembered what Michael said in the holding cell the day of his sentencing. He hadn’t told her what he was planning because he didn’t want her to feel obligated to help. Like Lincoln, he believed that Sebastian signified the closure of her life with them. But nothing and no one could ever truly end things for her and the brothers. They were bound together, beyond all logic.

Beyond what was good, or smart, or even right. But it was how it was, and Veronica could no more ignore that than she could cause her own heart to stop beating.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue is from The Pilot.

Michael didn’t see Lincoln for two days after his disastrous trip to Champaign. Because he was sullen and angry over the whole debacle, he knew the balance he’d tried to keep all summer so Lincoln didn’t get suspicious had left him. But when Lincoln showed up, looking very bad and stinking to high heaven of what Michael knew to be “bender” behavior, he actually forgot about his broken heart momentarily.

Lincoln looked terrible, and one thing Michael had always been a sucker for was Lincoln looking terrible.

He helped him into the shower, and then got him into his bed to sleep off the sick, because there was no other way to really get rid of it.

While Lincoln slept, Michael brooded. He had no idea what had caused this, but he was willing to bet it had something to do with Veronica. After he’d left her sitting on her ass in that park, amidst beautiful environs that he’d thought so perfect a place to be with Veronica in, he’d gotten into his car, sat baking in the late summer heat, and cried like a baby. He’d cried so hard he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d lost that much fluid from his body that hadn’t been sexually related. He refused to think he cried more over Veronica breaking up with him than he had about his mother’s death.

After he’d regained control, he’d driven home as fast as he could, his foot against the floorboards of his old Honda. The car, at top speed, only went 70mph on the freeway because it shook viciously if he tried to go any faster. He made up his mind during that long drive that the only thing he needed to feel about Veronica Donovan was anger. He wasn’t going to let her words about him knowing better penetrate anything. All he had ever known was he was better for her than Linc, and she didn’t even care. She didn’t want someone who would take care of her no matter what, or who loved her more than…

That’s when his train of thought had slammed up against a mental wall. He’d been thinking crazily, his brain firing so quickly, processing all the damage of those moments in the park that it was just all mixed up in his head. He didn’t love Veronica more than Linc. He might be better than Linc for her, but Linc was his brother, and he loved him, limitlessly. They were family, and regardless of the state of Lincoln’s relationship with Veronica, or Michael’s certainty that Veronica had broken up with him because of his brother, Lincoln had always been the only one who tried to take care of Michael, who cared about Michael. Who had gotten him out of foster care? Who had pushed him about school, even when Michael wanted to give up?

Who was his family?

Who would kill him if he found out about what Michael had done with Veronica?

The longer he sat there in the dark living room, the angrier he became, and the list of Veronica’s sins grew. She had done this to them. She had wrecked them both. She was at fault for all the screwed-up-ness that existed in Lincoln’s little shit-hole apartment. 

Veronica Donovan, the girl they’d run beside innocently as children had grown up to wedge between them, but only Michael was even aware of the wedge. Lincoln’s ignorance of the situation seemed only fitting when Michael considered what would happen if his brother somehow found out about him and Veronica. He was sure he’d heard the term ‘justifiable homicide’ on television, and there might be a sympathetic jury out there for that.

Who would even blame Lincoln if he beat the piss out of Michael? Michael _did_ know better than to get down and dirty with a girl his brother had been with.

As if Veronica were just _a_ girl. That’s where Michael’s true guilt erupted now that the affair was most certainly over. Veronica was Lincoln’s. In every sense of possession, however misogynistic or chauvinistic it was, Veronica had belonged to Lincoln for years, long before she actually was his, long before he’d actually claimed her. Michael’s infringement on that territory was nigh on to treason.

Tallying the list of misdeeds, the ones on Veronica and the ones on him, while Lincoln’s sick, exhausted snores bounced off the bedroom walls, led Michael to embrace some truths anyway, if not all of them. He blamed Veronica for everything that had gone wrong (or could still go wrong), but he accepted the inevitability of payment for his own sins, though the only sin he acknowledged as solely his was the carnal knowledge he had of his brother’s ex-girlfriend. He accepted it so if the first punch ever came, he would be able to take it like a man, and gain Lincoln’s forgiveness.

The sad realization that he had been willingly sacrificing Lincoln for Veronica, though Lincoln had no knowledge of it, hit him suddenly. His own self-centeredness—that he’d been made aware of because of Veronica—seemed to have no ending place. He had too many memories of Linc being there for him; like doing everything he could, and badgering the foster care people until they let Michael him come live with him, Lisa and LJ when there was barely enough room in their apartment for them. Lincoln had never done anything specifically to make Michael feel unloved; the offenses he laid at Linc’s feet were all on Veronica’s behalf. He felt the wrongs inflicted on her by his brother like everything else, too deeply, too acutely. He knew he wasn’t normal, but he’d never realized how he’d allowed his LLI to affect his loyalties.

Sex had obviously deep-sixed his common sense. 

 

 

Lincoln stumbled into the living room some time during the night, waking Michael up. The kitchen light came on and Michael shaded his eyes as Lincoln got a glass of water from the tap and emptied it noisily not once but twice. “You okay?” Michael asked softly as his brother set the glass down on the counter.

Lincoln turned slowly and walked back towards the living room. He only wore a pair of boxer briefs, but Michael figured he was lucky to not being staring down a totally naked man. He’d put him to bed naked, so it was saying something for Lincoln’s return to consciousness that he’d thought to put on something before he left his bedroom. “Thanks for cleaning me up, man,” Lincoln said, his voice hoarse, indicating he had some recollection of the previous day’s events.

“What happened?” Michael asked as Lincoln sat down in the chair opposite the sofa where Michael lay.

“Same shit, different day,” Lincoln muttered, rubbing a hand over his face.

“You had 90 days, Linc.” Michael tried to keep the accusation out of his voice; just because he assumed it was Veronica-related didn’t make it a reality.

“I had 100 days, actually, Mike,” Lincoln snapped. He blew out a breath and then leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. Softly, hurt-filled words flowed into the room, “I had a 100 days of sobriety and 100 days without Vee, and you know what? It just didn’t seem worth it.”

“What happened?” Michael repeated. Why did Veronica hold so much power, over both of them?

“I slept with Jasmine.” The muted quality in Lincoln’s voice did nothing to soften the shock of this pronouncement.

“Jasmine?” Michael asked in disbelief.

“Jasmine,” Lincoln repeated. Then he added questioningly, “Vee’s roommate, you know?”

“Yeah, Linc, I know,” Michael said curtly, sitting up suddenly, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“I was drunk. I was pissed. I don’t fuckin’ know. It just happened. I don’t really even remember it. What I do remember is waking up, and taking one look at her face, and knowing…” He cursed some more, under his breath, and dropped his head down until his forehead touched his folded hands.

“Veronica found you guys?” Michael asked, feeling for just one brief second an impossible combination of vindication and empathy that made his head spin.

“I guess so,” Lincoln huffed. “She came home while I was passed out…I didn’t actually see her.”

Michael scoffed in annoyance. “What did you expect? You fuck someone in her house, and you think she’s not going to find out about it?” Lincoln’s neck straightened and his eyes met Michael’s through the dim glow splashing into the living room from the street light outside. “Oh, you wanted her to know, oh, I get it. She fucked someone else, so you fucked someone else.” Michael paused as the motivation and the behavior intersected, but he still didn’t understand completely. “Except…why now, Linc? You’ve known for how long that she had a boyfriend?”

“She’s pregnant,” Lincoln said, and the words had a torn quality, as though they had been ripped from his soul. “I went to get her back, a little over a week ago, I went to tell her that I didn’t care about the other guy, I just wanted her back, and she told me…she’s pregnant.”

Michael didn’t respond, because he felt a tightness in his chest at the mention of the pregnancy that no longer existed, and at the idea that Veronica had so quickly ended things with him in light of that, as well as Lincoln pleading for her to come back to him. That was his proof, right? He knew she’d ended things with him because of Lincoln. He remained silent for a long time before finally breathing out an “Oh,” that was nearly as stupid as it was unneeded. He knew he should be asking questions, do something to keep the conversation going, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word.

“I was a jackass, as usual,” Lincoln mumbled, rubbing his fingers over his eyes.

Michael couldn’t help but think of the difference between his reaction to the news and his brother’s. Michael had been the happiest he could ever remember being at the prospect of a child, his child, Veronica’s child. Lincoln had been devastated, so devastated he’d given up 100 days of sobriety, as well as hurt Veronica in the worst possible way. It wasn’t just that he slept with someone else, Michael suddenly realized. Lincoln had picked someone specific—just as Veronica had. The rage that flowed upward from his stomach and coated his tongue had an instantaneous affect on Lincoln as well. “Yeah, you are,” Michael said, his tone cutting. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Michael demanded. “How scared must she have been, to have a baby, and you decide to fuck her roommate to get back at her?”

How scared _had_ Veronica been? He remembered her trembling in his arms as she told him, the anxiety he believed he’d soothed away with his promises to take care of her, with all the stupid plans he’d come up with to have as many options for them as possible. But the ultimate fear: To have Michael’s baby—and to tell Lincoln she was having a baby—anybody’s baby. Yet she had done it. She had told him, though maybe she hadn’t been brave enough to tell him everything. If that baby hadn’t disappeared, they would have told Lincoln together, they would have had to, they’d both known it, and accepted it, though Michael acknowledged he had been more willing than she. Lincoln would have had to deal with the pain of not only Veronica having someone else’s baby, but having that someone else be the closest possible person to Lincoln in the whole world.

The irony was enough to make Michael choke on his own anger, his despair, and his outright helplessness in the face of all that they had done. Veronica said she needed time to recover from the damage she’d inflicted, but Michael became certain in that moment that he himself could never totally recover from what he had done.

He loved her, with everything inside him that was capable of loving anyone; he had poured everything that he was into that ideal. It wasn’t that he loved Veronica more than Lincoln, but it was very different, and almost incomparable. She had made him mad, she had ripped his heart out, she had made choices, and said things that proved she did not love him as he loved her, but it didn’t matter. He loved her, and he had lost her. Lincoln. Fucking, screwed up, idiot Lincoln. He glared with renewed anger at his brother, longing to wrap his hands around Lincoln’s thick neck and squeeze until all the pain seeped out of him.

“I didn’t go there intending to sleep with Jasmine,” Lincoln said defensively. “I was half-lit when I got there. I took pizza—I think I was going to tell her I didn’t care whose baby it was, I just wanted her back, but she wasn’t there, and Jasmine wouldn’t tell me where she was, but then it was obvious. If she wasn’t there, and she wasn’t at work, she must’ve been with him. Five beers later, I finally stopped caring.” Shoving his hands through his hair agitatedly, he got to his feet.

Michael realized his brother was headed back towards his bedroom, and something wild possessed him. “Would you have? Really, Linc?” he demanded sarcastically. “You’d have taken her back even though she was having some other guy’s baby?”

Lincoln paused, half turning, his eyes on the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I love her, man. I love her no matter what. Don’t think I don’t know how you sit there and judge me, oh-mighty-Michael, but you don’t get it. You don’t understand. Relationships are complicated, and yeah, I’ve been an asshole and done things that I deserved to be punished for, but Vee knows I love her, and that’s always been the bottom line between us. So yeah, I know she was screwing some other guy, but I know she loves me. And I’d love to think I’d be such a stand up guy, that I wouldn’t care about her kid being some other guy’s kid. She loves LJ, even though he’s not hers,” he said, as if that proved something.

Michael heard Lincoln talking, but pretty much after the words, _You don’t understand_ , he lost all sense of balance. Lincoln’s lips moved, and he reasoned truths that Michael would never refute, but the loop of condescension in those words _You don’t understand_ amplified until the blaring, buzzing noise of it in his ears erupted out of his mouth. “What don’t I understand, exactly?” he demanded. Lincoln’s head swiveled all the way around until he stared down at Michael. “I don’t know what it’s like to be in love, is that what you think? I don’t know what it’s like to love a girl and then have her tell me it’s just not right, and we shouldn’t be together? You think you’re the only one here that ever had to deal with Veronica calling it quits?!” His voice had escalated with each question, until he was shouting so loudly that Lincoln lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender as well as obvious worry that the neighbors might hear them at 4:30 in the morning.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Mike?” he asked, his voice soft. He moved towards Michael until the only thing between them was the coffee table.

Michael blurted out, “I just got my heart shattered, in case you care.”

“What?” Lincoln’s brows drew down over his eyes in confusion. “What did Veronica ever do to you?”

Michael’s anger was like a back draft over his sorrow, the flames leaping high only to be outsourced by a generous amount of water. He back peddled only slightly, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean Veronica,” he said hastily. “I just meant—oh never mind,” he spat, flinging his pillow from the right side of the sofa, where he’d been laying on it, to the left, his return to Michael the manipulator as flowing and flawless as a light switch being thrown. If ever he wanted Lincoln to ask him a question, all he’d ever had to do was act like he wouldn’t tell him something.

“Like hell,” Lincoln said. “What happened to you?” When Michael didn’t answer immediately, Lincoln came around the coffee table and sat down next to Michael on the couch. “Who the hell ‘shattered’ your heart?”

Surprisingly, from that moment on everything that came out of his mouth was truthful, was exactly what he would have said to his brother about any girl who had dumped him. He explained that he hadn’t told Lincoln because she was the first, the first in every way, and he’d felt embarrassed; he talked about how good it had been, how happy he’d been, how wonderful it had seemed for such a small portion of time. He left out the things that had made him, in part, so joyful—the one-upping of Lincoln and the baby—but that didn’t matter, because the longer he talked, the more certain he became that Lincoln knew exactly how he felt, and the sympathy he offered meant more to Michael than anything else ever could.

He felt his throat clog with emotion he hadn’t intended to ever display for his brother, and then Lincoln’s arm surrounded his shoulder and his voice whispered in a conspiratorial sort of way, “Oh, Mikey, I know, and it fucking sucks.” And that was all it took to reduce Michael to tears he swore he’d never shed again. They came slowly at first, but then Lincoln’s fingers closed tightly around the nape of Michael’s neck and his face was suddenly pressed to his brother’s chest. Deep sobs replaced those tears in a matter of seconds, and then his eyes weren’t even damp, it was just the wracking sound of deep-seated pain jumping from his throat.

Michael let Lincoln soothe him; he appreciated that no one else could understand his pain, not like Lincoln could. Even Lincoln didn’t know how accurately he understood.

 

 

A few days later, they were playing Mario Brothers on their ancient Nintendo; Michael had repaired it so many times, it was rather a miracle that it still worked. The fact that they sat together in a darkened room playing a game they had both beat a few dozen times over several years before spoke of the camaraderie that getting their hearts broken together had inspired, and Michael felt so much better now he couldn’t even articulate it.

He couldn’t explain it to Lincoln, but he understood it pretty well for himself. He’d had his moment in time with a beautiful girl that he loved. He had known from the beginning she didn’t love him back, and though he’d made a valiant effort, nothing he’d done had caused her to love him, at least not like how she loved Lincoln.

But Michael loved Lincoln, and he’d loved him more in the last two days than he had in the last three months. They were on an even plane now; they were men. He could catch Lincoln’s eye and say, “I know, man,” and he did. He knew, and Lincoln knew he knew. And there was some weirdly wonderful thing in that subtext that made Michael’s next choice obvious, and easy, too.

Lincoln loved Veronica. Veronica loved Lincoln. Lincoln had thought her pregnancy might cause a problem between them, but Michael knew there was no longer a pregnancy to contend with. Sending Lincoln to Veronica to find that out was the only gift he had to offer his brother; it was his only way to apologize for something Lincoln would never know about.

It was the least he could do.

His assumption that Veronica would forgive Lincoln stemmed more from his own worship of Lincoln than it did of some higher opinion of Veronica. He figured in the face of an apology, she would be putty in Linc’s hands. His jealousy of Lincoln had hung like a cloud over their relationship dynamic for a long while now, and it was all connected to Veronica. A wiser, stronger Michael had emerged from this heartbreak, and he intended to make it as right as he could.

“I’ve been thinking,” he murmured as Lincoln jerked the game controller high over his head in an effort to make Luigi jump over a formidable foe.

“Dammit,” Lincoln muttered, because Luigi got hit anyway and shrunk in size. “What’s that?” he asked, throwing Michael a glance.

“You should go apologize to Vee,” Michael announced, and Lincoln, in the form of Luigi, jumped right off a cliff.

It was Michael’s turn, but he just set his controller aside when Lincoln turned to face him fully. “I should what?” Lincoln asked, eyeing his brother skeptically.

“You should go apologize. You should. Think about it, Linc, if you go and admit what you did was wrong, which you believe anyway, then Veronica will have to forgive you. You go down there with no expectations, with no I-want-to-get-back-together crap, just with an apology, and a I-just-needed-you-to-know, and you’ll look good. You’ll _be_ good,” Michael clarified. “You won’t feel as bad as you do right now, you’ll have closure at least.”

Lincoln’s face scrunched up in uncertainty. “That’s what I did when I went down there to tell her about being sober. She just got mad at me.”

“Linc, how could she get any madder? She caught you in bed with her roommate. You’re either screwed beyond redemption, or this will be a move she never saw coming, and you’ll be totally forgiven.” Michael paused, watching as the possibilities bloomed in Lincoln’s mind. “It’s just an idea,” he said nonchalantly. Reaching down, he picked up his hand controller again and restarted the game.

Lincoln continued to be quiet as Michael ran through the first level quickly, without even coming close to dying. As level two started, Lincoln picked up his controller again, and said quietly, “That’s a good idea, Michael.”

 

 

Veronica threw the odds and ends of her belongings into one large box in the center of her living room. Everything else had been packed, much more neatly, but this box held the stuff that had had no organization to it, and stuff that she told herself she would throw away at some point. A lot of those items were memorabilia that tied her life to the brothers, and in all truthfulness she thought she ought to get rid of it.

She just wasn’t ready yet.

The box would be too heavy for her to carry, but several people from her work office, including three guys, were coming over to help her move, so one of them would be able to heft it up. As it was, she grabbed it by one of the box lids and dragged it over to the pile of boxes that sat next to her furniture, which too had been shoved into one corner of her living room. Glancing at the clock, she realized she had enough time to run down to the truck stop and get some lunch before they all showed up to help.

She looked around, searching through the organized chaos for her purse, and just as she found it, a knock sounded on her front door. She hoped they hadn’t come early, because she was really hungry.

Pulling the door open to find Lincoln standing there shocked her. Shocked her, and gutted her, all in one fell swoop. When she moved to shut the door on him without even saying a word, he put a hand against the door and stuck a foot just inside, so it couldn’t close. “Just let me say what I came to say, Vee, and then I’ll get out of your way.”

She paused, not looking at his face. Keeping her eyes on the doorframe, she suddenly wished her work friends would all arrive an hour early. She could go hungry, but she couldn’t see Lincoln. “No,” was all she uttered, but then his fingers gently surrounded her wrist, a light pressure, just his thumb against the soft skin of the inside of her forearm. Warmth and longing flowed upward through her body from that simple touch. Tears instantly pricked her eyes, filling their edges and dripping down her cheeks much too fast. She jerked her arm from his grasp, spun away and lifted her hands to wipe at her face.

“I just came to say I’m sorry,” he began in a rush of words that wouldn’t stop once he got going. “I’m sure you figured it out, that I was drunk, but that’s no excuse, Vee. I did it on purpose. I was trying to hurt you, because I was out of my mind, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just want you to know how sorry I am. Anyone in their right mind would say if I really loved you, like ever, I would never have done such a shitty thing. And maybe they’re right. But I wasn’t in my right mind. I hadn’t been since that day, since I’d seen you, and you told me about the baby. I went a little crazy, I think, just lost it, and by the time I resurfaced, I’d—“ he paused, and Veronica wondered if he could possibly say anything else to make her chest hurt more. She pressed a fist to her lips, trying to stifle the sobs wracking her body. “I’d proven exactly why you should’ve left me all along.” The pause now sounded a little watery on his end of things, and Veronica thought that would be worse than all the rest of it, if Lincoln cried too.

She turned around, swiping at her face haphazardly. “I appreciate the apology,” she choked out, but that was all she intended to reciprocate. “You should go, now,” she finished.

He blinked a few times in quick succession and then his eyes wandered around the apartment, as though avoiding looking directly at her. “You moving?” he asked.

She nodded. “Jasmine moved out, and I couldn’t afford to stay here on my own.” Why Jasmine moved out must be obvious, but Veronica kept it simple.

Lincoln bit his lip, then looked back at her. “Why didn’t you just have your boyfriend move in here with you?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he demanded, “He is going to take care of this, isn’t he? I mean, that baby isn’t just your responsibility.” He jabbed a finger at her middle section aggressively.

Veronica could feel the tears still leaking down her face. She shook her head negatively, and Lincoln’s mouth opened angrily, but before he could speak another word she said, “There is no baby.” He froze, pre-mid-tirade, his mouth hanging in an ‘O’ shape for several seconds before snapping shut. A dozen questions flew across his face, but Veronica saved him from having to ask them. “I had a miscarriage, just a few days after I last saw you. And I broke up with my boyfriend the same day you—and Jasmine—um, the same day…” she trailed off, mostly because she seemed unable to utter the words that described what had happened that day.

His face changed imperceptibly, almost so quickly she wouldn’t have noticed except that her eyes clung to his. She saw the sorrow in his face disappear for a split second, but then it came back, instantly and at an even greater degree. “Oh, Vee,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He dropped his head, and turned away, but his fingers gripped the wood paneling of the doorway, flexing against it until she saw his knuckles turn white. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry.” Not looking at her, he asked softly, “Are you all right?”

He had had a reaction, so infinitesimal that she wouldn’t have known, except that she’d had the same feeling of relief flood her once upon a time too. Veronica answered honestly, “I’m all right. Really, the worst part was you, as sick as it is to say. I wasn’t ready to have a baby. I’ve sort of felt like finding you here that day was my punishment for being relieved about losing it.”

He lifted his head to look at her, but he just shook his head. “It can’t work like that.”

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t believe in karma,” she said, a small smile cracking her face, and her heart.

He shook his head again. “I don’t think you deserve to be punished,” he replied softly.

The sob that bubbled up and erupted out of her mouth shredded the distance between them. “Oh, Linc,” she whispered miserably, and then she was in his arms, and her face lay against his chest. For all the terrible things she knew she’d done that she did deserve some sort of punishment, it suddenly seemed as though she’d been given just what she wanted instead.

He held her tightly for a long time, his hands warm and sure on her back and in her hair. At some point they made it to the sofa, to the one end that wasn’t piled halfway to the ceiling with stuff to be moved, and somehow her lips were on his, and before her friends from work showed up, Lincoln was somehow back in her life, as if he’d never left it.

 

 

On the following New Year’s Eve, Michael saw Veronica for the first time since the day she’d broken up with him. Lincoln had just let her into his apartment, and Michael was already there, with several of Lincoln’s friends, and a few of Michael’s friends. It was a good-sized crowd, but all the same, Michael wondered if any of them—particularly the ones standing close to him—could hear his heart pounding as she walked in.

She smiled and embraced Lincoln, because they did that; they were a couple after all. He looked away when they might have kissed. Michael’s only other opportunity to see her had been the week before on Christmas Day, but he had opted to stay at Lisa’s with LJ rather than go with Lincoln. He figured, as long as he could avoid it, the better.

It had been four months, four months since his willing sacrifice for Lincoln. He remembered the moment of joy, and the days following that seemed to reinforce what a great idea he’d had, but he also remembered the horrifying realization that he might always love Veronica. He might always love her, the way Linc loved her, but he would always have to watch her with his brother.

Before that summer, it had been torture, but after it, it was worse. He knew he couldn’t see her without remembering being naked with her; he couldn’t see her without thinking of how different it might all be if she hadn’t had a miscarriage. He couldn’t see her without knowing he had made all _this_ possible.

He could have told Lincoln the truth, and the truth could have been too much for his brother to forgive. He didn’t know for sure, but the possibility teased him endlessly. He didn’t have Veronica, and if he’d chosen the other option with Lincoln, maybe Lincoln wouldn’t have her either.

What iffing himself almost into madness had led him to have three beers before she even arrived that evening. He had two reasons for not drinking more: his fear that more alcohol might loosen his tongue, and the fact that Lincoln had started earlier than him and had drunk more already, and Michael was somewhat worried about that. “It’s a party, man,” Lincoln had said jovially only ten minutes earlier when Michael asked him if he thought he ought to slow down some.

Veronica didn’t look for him immediately, she was too busy observing Lincoln’s inebriated state; Michael noticed the frown in her forehead before it smoothed out as she looked around at some of the people closer to the door, saying hello and hugging friends she hadn’t seen in a while. By the time her eyes landed on his, he’d been watching her for at least 10 minutes. She didn’t hesitate, though, as soon as she saw him, she moved towards him and hugged him tightly. She murmured a hello into his ear, and rubbed her hands up his back the way she always had, the way that had never been sexual, but then suddenly was, and now was supposed to not be again.

Only it was, at least to him, because he still wanted her more than anything else.

“How are you?” she asked, pulling away. She kept a hand on his shoulder, but the rest of her moved far enough away from him that hopefully she didn’t notice his reaction to her.

“I’m well,” he replied, nodding a little tipsily. “You?” he asked.

Her eyes searched his, and he wondered what she was looking for, or if she found it when she suddenly smiled. “I’m good too. It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you,” she said, the sincerity in the words as heart warming as it was heart wrenching, because she was most definitely Veronica from before the summer, there was nothing there of the girl he had lost his head completely over. Her familiar touch radiated from a lifetime of big sister activity, not from a former lover. There was something almost benign about her, and his acute sensitivity to it broke his heart all over again.

“Hey guys,” Lincoln’s voice came from behind Veronica. “Huddle up, I want to take a picture.” Veronica spun around in front of him, and Michael realized, Lincoln was gesturing to everyone standing there, Michael, Veronica, Derek Sweeney and his younger brother Daryl, as well as a couple other friends, who just all happened to be men. Michael saw Lincoln’s eyes twinkle as the realization that a bunch of guys surrounded his girlfriend hit him. “Watch out for my interests, here, Mike,” he said, throwing a drunken wink at Michael. He pushed his hands towards each other in mid-air, indicating that they all needed to squeeze together to get in the camera frame.

Michael, crazy and a little stupid he would later call himself, grabbed Veronica around the waist and pulled her back against him. “Got her, Linc,” he blathered, his hands joining loosely over the zipper of her jeans. He wasn’t actually touching her, not with his hands, but her body was pressed full length to his, the small of her back cradling his growing erection.

He felt her stiffen against him, and then her hands grabbed at him, pushing against the tops of his forearms just slightly. “Smile!” Lincoln commanded. “Say cheese,” he cajoled a second later.

And Michael, lost in a crowd of guys, two of which and dropped down in front of Veronica on their knees so everyone could be in the picture, did something he couldn’t even say he thought about until after he’d already done it. He cupped his hand, just slightly, over the juncture of Veronica’s thighs and pulled her back into him. It only lasted a small moment, and it was in an effort to get her closer. What stupefied him, however, was the way she stiffened even more in his grasp, for just a split second, and then she relaxed, fluidly, against him. She melted into him the way he remembered so well from too many kisses that led to only one thing.

He dropped his head down so their cheeks were close together, just as Lincoln clicked the flash, and everyone was momentarily blinded, none more so than Michael. Lost to moments he wanted back so badly, and often feared he’d never want with anyone else, it felt like the shortest blip of space out of his life at the same time it felt like a moment that could never end. As everyone moved back to where they’d been standing before the photo call, Veronica slid out of his embrace, turning abruptly to face him. She said nothing, she only looked at him with a mixture of confusion and desire, and he suddenly felt very satisfied. 

Maybe he didn’t have her. Maybe he never would again. But it didn’t change anything. She still wanted him, and that knowledge burned right through him in a blaze of glory.

 

 

The day Michael walked into the Infirmary at Fox River and saw Sara Tancredi in full, live color, he had the sort of reaction deep in his stomach one shouldn’t have when one knows that one is about do something despicable.

But, what can you do? Michael knew that feeling, knew it well. He just had never felt it about anyone other than Veronica, ever, and the confusion that followed seemed appropriate.

He’d learned to be a good actor though; years of enduring Linc and Veronica had trained him well, even after Linc knew the truth. It had been even more imperative in the aftermath that Linc believe he was as over it as he claimed to be. He could give lessons on how to convince your brother you don’t still think about his girlfriend in the dark of night when you really shouldn’t be.

“I'm Michael by the way,” he said with a smile.

The doctor wasn’t impressed, he could tell. “Scofield. I read your report,” she stated flatly. 

“And you are?” he prompted when she didn’t respond as he’d wished her to.

“Doctor Tancredi will do,” she said, not giving an inch.

As the conversation went on, he found Michael the manipulator front and center, asking questions, making remarks, saying all the things he’d planned to say months before. It was the sick feeling in his stomach he hadn’t anticipated, and he wondered what Veronica would say if she could see him now.


End file.
